Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/146

Counter-Currents (his life) to be a sacred thing. Perhaps he thought to comfort his mother's old age. But when that letter came, he sailed on the next steamer. It was a summons that few men, and certainly no Frenchman, could deny.

When the women of France refused to participate in the International Congress of Women at The Hague, they defined their position in a document so dignified, so lucid, and so logical, that it deserves to be handed down to future ages as an illustration of inspired common sense lifted to the heights of heroism. Let no one who reads it ever deny that women are capable of clear thinking, of sane and balanced judgment. In contrast to the vague and formless peace-talk which came floating over to us from Holland, and has been reechoed ever since; talk which starting from no definite premises has reached no just conclusions, the clear utterances of these French women rang with insistent exactitude. They rejected all sentimental 130