Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/142

Counter-Currents, at which women dare to sneer. It is not a light thing to give up life,—"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends;"—yet death is the least of the horrors which soldiers daily face.

The third and most vital thing asked of women in these dread days is self-sacrifice. They must give their share of help, they must bear their share of sorrow. They cannot dignify their reluctance to do this by calling it moral revolt, or moral courage, or any other high-sounding name. They cannot claim for themselves a loftier virtue on the score of their lower hardihood. Civic morality consists in putting the good of the state above the good of the individual. It has no other test. If women are, as they say, responsible for the conservation of human life, they should hold themselves responsible for the ennobling of human life, for the cherishing of some finer instinct than that of self-preservation. On 126