Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/141

Women and War she has lost,—husband, son, or brother,—should not have died in vain.

Next to intelligence, a woman's most valuable asset is a reasonable modesty. She is terribly hampered by a conviction of her own goodness. It gets in her way at every step, clouding her naturally clear perceptions, and clogging her naturally keen conscientiousness. She is wrong in assuming with Miss Addams that she feels a "peculiar moral passion of revolt against both the cruelty and the waste of war." She is wrong in assuming with Madame Schwimmer that she "supplants physical courage with moral courage," when she calls noisily for peace. There are men in plenty who feel the moral passion of revolt quite as keenly as do the most sensitive of women; but who also feel the moral responsibility of defending the safety of their country, the sacredness of their homes. The moral courage demanded of every soldier is fully as great as the physical 125