Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/180

 and experience point to the contrary. Women are not so strong physically as men, but where, in individual cases, the wishes of women have been clearly and definitely expressed, the men have yielded their own. When, through the vote, the women express their political desires with clearness, giving reasons for their action, the men of good character will probably take the part of the women, for they will recognise that great bodies of women voting heavily on one side must mean a massing of those instinctive feminine forces which make for the protection of the race. There is at least as much ground for this assumption as for that of the physical force anti-suffragists, that men will use violence to compel women to yield up their political power in the improbable event of sex opposing sex.

It is true that women do not fight, but not true that they could not fight if properly trained. Modern warfare is not a matter of muscle but depends upon science, intelligence, and the finer mental qualities. The small hand of a child could set working a piece of mechanism which would deal death to scores or hundreds of people. Men and women equally trained in the use of weapons of warfare would attain the same average of skill. Women have many times fought in battle with distinction, and their sex was not discovered till their death. If the power to fight