Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/61

 Women are making great claims: they are not only claiming that the men of their own land shall not govern them by physical force alone, but they are making what, to some quite honest people, seems an outrageous claim,—that they should have a right to an equal share with men in deciding foreign policy and the question of war. They claim this right, because they believe that it would be for the good of the State, and because they think the State owes it to them because they are citizens and not parasites; because they are doing an absolutely indispensable work and making sacrifices which are at least equal to the sacrifices men make for the safety, honour and welfare of the State. Let us examine into the grounds of this plea.

At an open-air meeting a man approached the speaker with what he evidently regarded as a poser: "If you get a man's rights, will you women fulfil a man's responsibilities?" It was a good question to ask at an open-air meeting, where close reasoning is almost impossible, and the answer, "No," brought a sneering, "Ah, I thought not!" and a round of applause from the youths round the cart, who didn't look as if they had thought much about even a lad's responsibilities. The heckler was, of course, begging the question. By talking of "a man's rights" he did not merely mean the rights which a man can now by law exercise; he implied that a man held these rights by virtue of certain services rendered by him, and that, if women claimed these same rights, they must be prepared to render these