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 passing away. Fire-arms of precision, whereby you are picked off by an invisible enemy a mile or more distant, are beginning to take the place of the old hand-to-hand mêlee; mere gallantry and dash avails ever less and less against cool skill. Even in the works of peace, automatic machinery is every year more widely supplanting the brawny arm of the labourer or smith; in short, it is a patent fact that the steady and relentless progress of nineteenth century civilisation is neutralising, one by one, those physical advantages which men formerly possessed over women in the struggle for existence.’

‘Your inference from which, I suppose,’ said Mr Dimpleton, the father of Rose, who was among the clergy present, ‘is that we ought to set on foot female regiments along with the others?’

‘I think the military strength of every nation might be advantageously increased by enrolling as a volunteer corps such strong, and perhaps not very intellectual, young women as might take to the life from choice. Such a change would, in my belief, rather conduce to the maintenance of general peace. It would bring home to women the miseries of war, if they were liable to take part in it personally, and men might on their account also be less willing to engage in bloodshed. But whether this be so or not, as my niece observed just now, we can admit no distinctions. If women are to descend into the arena of life, they must do so without reserve.’

‘Will public opinion in this country ever sanction such a revolutionary innovation, think you?’ asked another parson.

‘Public opinion may have to accommodate itself to that and other changes, whether sanctioning them or not,’ returned Mr Bristley, in a somewhat defiant tone. ‘Revolution, when it comes, does not ask leave of people’s prejudices, And I have an undefined but very pronounced feeling that