Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/297

 ROOSEVELT

��often finds its fit dwelling place in some flat de- signed to furnish with the least possible expend- iture of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?

The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else ; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman ; tho neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long continued ill treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrong- ful aggression. No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and the children who should arouse every tender feel- ing in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

I believe in the woman keeping her self-re- spect just as I believe in the man doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man's, and indeed a little more ; and I regard marriage as a partnership, in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of tho other as well as of his or her owti. But I think that the duties are even more important than the X— 17 257

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