Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/26

 spoke as women and not as echoes of men. Quite recently women have suddenly broken the long silence, and there is a flood of exposition which is likely, from its volume and force, to make confusion take the place of silence. Ellen Key in Sweden, Rosa Mayreder in Austria, Mrs. Gilman in America and Olive Schreiner in South Africa are a few of the most distinguished writers; but there are troops of others who, in books and magazines and papers, strive to deliver their souls. This little book aims merely at being a brief survey of the women's movement and of the directions it appears to be taking; a survey which shall deal with principles and the broad aspect of things rather than with details, and that will rather suggest what are the difficulties and in what spirit they should be approached, than offer a universal solution for the deepest and most complex problem that has been set before the human race.

The women's movement in Great Britain has for the last seven years been directed so considerably into political channels, the struggle for the parliamentary vote has absorbed so much of the active, organised and thinking women of the nation, that one hears people talk sometimes as if the suffrage movement were the women's movement, and as if, when the vote shall be won, there will be no more women's movement. One would have to be very shallow and very insular, too, to think so. And what a tragedy it would be! What! Shall all these sacrifices be made to get the vote and then nothing