This concord and unity in duty had much the same quality of joy that sends the soldier to face death. It stirred something very deep in women’s nature. Militancy brought a rare chance of happiness: it made women aware of their souls. Through it they first found escape from the deadness of sterile lives and gave up separate little aims that made conflicts between woman and woman. The petty strifes of no issue and no importance were changed into one struggle that must be won; and by expanding from an existence of aimlessness and stagnation into one of common purpose and advance, women gained the chance they were seeking of adventure and sacrifice for body and spirit. No wonder, then, that they gave themselves up to a great holiday of the emotions. This may have expressed itself basely in the wrecking of property and much that was useless, but it was not all base. In the lives of numberless women it has meant something much more than hatred and vanity, or self-deceiving work. Militancy has been a great as well as a very little thing. As a movement it was foolish and morally perverse, no doubt, but its members were morally passionate. The disorder of purpose, the spectacle of wasted effort and folly, which filled many of us with anger—all this did bring gladness and liberation of spirit to the women themselves. They felt that their fighting was noble and glorious, which it was not, but they felt this with a power that came from the perverse conviction of their whole nature. And we shall need a conviction as passionate as this, but not perverse, before women can in the same way be won again to an equal passion of sacrifice and service. And this very rapture of escape from an aimless existence was in itself the sign of the failure in women’s lives, a proof that there was, indeed, something to be escaped from. We may not claim more than this for the Suffrage movement. War, such war as is now loose upon the world, came to accomplish its miracles, acting swiftly and almost without women knowing what was being done. The reality of life and of death has shaken up everything, and the quick pressure of events is changing all the conditions of life. Let us try to see a little more clearly.