Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/251

Rh its activity, that our interference with social development was neither useless nor unjustifiable. We may frankly admit that the American women have set us an example, and have in many respects put us to shame. If that is a reproach to us, it lies entirely with us to clear ourselves of it by setting an example, in our turn, to American women, which they need quite as much as we did theirs. I am alluding to struggles impending in the near future, which will at the same time give our German men an opportunity for freeing themselves from prejudice and of becoming reconciled to our aspirations. I do not consider it doubtful that American women will, within a short time, succeed in gaining the right of suffrage. They will gain it for us, too, and therefore it would be doubly disgraceful for us to bear no part whatever in the achievement, and to accept a right from their hands without some desert of our own. This is a point of honor with us. We cannot permit it to be said of us that, like slaves, we have received a right as a present. Those, only, who help to fight for it deserve it truly. And while we take part in the struggle we at the same time appeal to the honor of German men who cannot wish to expose themselves to the disgrace of withholding from their women a right that others grant them. These men will at the same time come to a recognition of the fact that not only their honor, but their interest as well, bid them to promote our intellectual activity and our participation in public affairs as much as possible. I seem