Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/182

 and for purposes which degrade no creature below the human. The reason why women are not sent to the front to fight is purely one of expediency. They are too valuable as child-bearers to be risked in this way. One man may be the father of an almost unlimited number of children. A woman is rarely the mother of twenty. If the race is to be preserved, its women must not be used too recklessly. Not chivalry, but race-expediency has been the deciding factor in this matter. There is little chivalry shown towards women when nations come to grips with one another. If the leaders of soldiers were not prevented by loyalty to their caste from making disclosures, they could all tell stories of the deeds of men towards women which would make the civilian shudder with horror.

The sweated woman, the half-starved mother of children, the social outcast, and the deserted wife are the images summoned to confound the dreamers who talk of chivalry towards women. These women occupy no lofty pedestal surrounded with prostrate worshippers, from which they are to be dragged against their will into the dusty arena of politics. They are thankful when they can earn enough money to buy bread. All their poor lives they have met with the coldest and cruellest unchivalry, and this fact alone entitles them to the one thing which might do