Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/132

 seriously, and it is to the interests of men and of the whole community that there should be sympathy and understanding and co-operation between men and women reformers. Women must beware of allowing themselves to be infected, when they obtain more power, with the brutality which has for ages robbed law of its moral sanctions, or with the legalism which has robbed conduct of the grace of the spirit. The social evil is largely the result of brutality, and brutal punishments are no remedy, even if you can persuade men to inflict them. We do relapse periodically into brutality, such as the introducing of flogging into a recent Act. But it is remarkable that this particular lapse occurred in a measure that had been hung up for a very long time and that was terribly overdue; therefore feeling was exasperated and the measure was finally pushed through on a wave of emotionalism when Members of Parliament scarcely dared oppose the flogging, lest they should be accused of sympathy with the offenders. One could not help feeling that a good many men found, in the easy enactment of flogging, relief from the necessity of thinking out and carrying out the far more difficult and searching reforms which might have some permanent effect. The flogging clause was detestable, both for what it did and for what it prevented being done. It is a matter for regret that women did not oppose it, as women; but brutality has had its effect on them too. If women were admitted to full citizenship there might be more hope that reforms could be