Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/178

 the great mass of womankind. It is painful to have to believe that such women are moved to opposition by a spirit of selfishness, pursuing a dog-in-the-manger policy for some narrow and selfish end. But it is exceedingly difficult for the average person to come to any other conclusion. One does not envy their treatment at the hands of posterity.

The stock argument of the anti-suffragists, and, judging from the number of occasions on which it is used, the one upon which they appear to rely the most, is the physical force argument; the argument that women cannot fight and, therefore, should not vote. It is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the political vote in this country does not go along with fighting capacity. Not one in ten of the men who vote can fight, or would be of any use if called upon to fight. Old men may vote, and lame and sick men, but they could in no circumstances be expected to fight; and the State could not spare from its service in other ways the accumulated wisdom of its veterans, or the gifts of other sorts of its physically disabled citizens. In the last resort they would try to fight, but only in the same way that every woman in similar straits would try, and they would be even less qualified to do so than strong and healthy women.

When this argument is used it is imagined