In truth, the breaking out of the war was most embarassing to them. Like a bull in a china shop, the rush of brutal fact destroyed many of their pretty theories. The stereotyped suffrage answer, when anti-suffragists pointed out that physical force was the fundamental basis of government, had been that this was no longer true. For example, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobs, speaking of women's demand for the ballot, said, about 1895: "Women could not claim the ballot while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, but this is no longer necessary or expected." And Mrs. Susan Fitzgerald in 1912 declared: "The age of the fighting man is passing. The world is coming to be ruled by intellect." When will the suffragists learn Lowell's maxim: "Don't never prophesy--onless ye know!" It is, however, a characteristic of professional false prophets not to lose their imperturbality and effrontery, but to trust that their followers will forget their mistaken guesses and listen open-mouthed to a new dispensation. The essential dogma of the Woman's Peace Party (none but suffragists admitted!) was that the adoption of woman suffrage was a necessary and effectual step toward abolishing war. "If women had had the vote in all countries now at war," said Mrs. Catt, "the conflict would have been prevented." History shows women at least as much inclined to war as men--a fact illustrated in the French Revolution, in our Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and in other instances too numerous to mention. The suffragists, ignorant of that fact, or ignoring it, advanced in support of their proposition a series of specious arguments designed to catch popular opinion. Of these arguments two were at the outset of the movement especially harped upon: (1) the alleged "international solidarity of women," and (2) the supposed likelihood of woman's opposition to militarism.