Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/200

 are making a tremendous miscalculation; for they might attain by the one what they altogether miss by the other; and this is going in the future to be more so, not less. The women of the future will have men on terms, or go without, and the terms must be the only honourable terms, of love and liberty and mutual service. A man will find he has no need to preach wifely submission to the woman whose love he has won, and he will find that he does not want it either.

Alarmists declare that the women's movement has caused sex-antagonism. The preceding chapter has, I think, disposed of such an absurd contention, and most thoughtful persons do not defend a statement so easily refuted by literature and history. Others, with more evidence, maintain that sex-antagonism was there, a kind of sleeping dog, which the women's movement has now aroused to vicious attack. It is contended that the progressive women have stirred up normal women to rebellion, which they never would, of themselves, have contemplated; that the progressives are mischief-makers, who have put dangerous ideas into the heads of people quite unable to carry them out, and the only result will be unrest, disputes, discomfort for men, misery for women, and a final vindication of the supreme authority of man. The progressives will probably suffer severe castigation, but the normal women will be kissed and forgiven, for, after all, they are only women and not quite accountable for their