What is going to be the permanent result? Will all this energy evaporate after the war, will it be reabsorbed in the home and work directly connected therewith, or will this great force of women’s work be still used in industrial and other employments? It is not easy to give a certain answer. Leaving aside the question whether such work if permanently continued will be good or bad for women, a matter on which already I have expressed my opinion strongly,[86] I want to consider how these fresh and advantageous labour conditions have affected, and will, I think, go on affecting, women’s own desires. The question is whether this change that war conditions have brought is one which the desires of women cause them to welcome, or whether it is an arrangement that has arisen out of necessity to which they are essentially antagonistic. What, in my opinion, makes the present situation dangerous is, that long before the war women were forcing an entrance into the world of labour, and struggling in competition with men to gain the positions which now are being thrust upon them. And I do not believe that in the mass to-day they are doing their work temporarily and to replace men for the period of the war, but rather they are aiming to establish their own economic emancipation. Probably of the million women[87] who have plunged into new work in connection with the war, the great majority are much better off economically than ever they were in times of peace. War has brought more of gain than of sacrifice. The new thing is the opportunity that has come. Individually women were adventurous before the war; they have now become adventurous as a class. War has but accentuated and made obvious the change that for long had been taking place in the desires of women. This turning away from themselves, from their own lives and duties, to the world and employments and duties of men, is a thing that was going on before the war, slowly and against much prejudice, but what matters is that it was going on. I shall make no attempt to deal with the serious economic results that are likely to occur should women, when the war is ended, struggle to compete with men in the labour market. The disasters that would follow such action are sufficiently plain. One result would certainly be a clash of sex, unavoidable in a work-struggle for the upper hand between women and men. The great temptation to women then will be to keep their positions by accepting lower wages than the men can take. No one can know whether they will do this.