It is under a confusing number of heads a tirade against the hostility of man to woman. Instances from all the ages jostle one another. Men do not even give women fair literary criticism, and this point is rather stressed. Mr. Birrell disliked the work of Hannah More; Mr. Max Beerbohm, in a delightful and probably untruthful sketch, says he cut up and burnt a work by some woman novelist unnamed. But I doubt if strong sexual feeling underlay either offence. It happened to be a woman novelist. But Mr. Max Beerbohm has been distinctly unflattering to various men contemporaries, and I doubt if Mr. Birrell would wallow in praise of Herbert Spencer. It happens that I have annotated several of the works of Professor Nicholas Murray Butler in a disparaging spirit; marginal illustrations are my weakness; and I have been at great pains to destroy by fire a large nobly printed card, very thick and strong and stylish, exhibiting one of his aphorisms. It was sent me by some American admirer we evidently share between us; it was probably intended to dominate my bedroom or study; and it found a useful rôle at last, charred but invincible--for fire recoiled from it--as packing for a picture. I suppose these facts would win me a place side by side with Mr. Birrell and Mr. Max Beerbohm in a revised edition of _Ancilla’s Share_. As it is they merely prove that we all have our literary dislikes. I don’t think Jane Austen has any case against men for lack of appreciation. I don’t think that any writing woman of Miss Robins’s generation can complain of anything in her reception by male critics, except perhaps a too eager welcome. But I will not embark upon any detailed treatment of the confused riot of assertions against men in this book. Need one even pretend to take seriously Miss Robins’s proposition that women would have managed the world better than men have done, that they would have prevented the world war and arrested the financial disorganisation of Europe? This talk of Ancilla’s tremendous nobility in the political field is sheer nonsense. So far the enfranchisement of women in Britain and America has had a confusing and belittling influence upon politics. It was the women’s influence in politics which achieved the crowning silliness of making Prohibition a part of the constitution of the United States, and in England women have done nothing to save the face of the countryside from Mr. Wheatley’s dismal women-enslaving house pustules. The drive for better education is no stronger than it was before our sisters had the vote; the drive for more scientific research is perceptibly feebler. Disarmament is manifestly a question of minor importance to women. Nevertheless this book proves by its temper what it fails to prove by its arguments, that sex antagonism is a fact of very great and increasing importance in our world.