she gives her care and service to all. She has no fears for herself; she would as soon die as live, provided only she is doing her duty. Perhaps, away down in the very core of her heart, her natural maternal instinct teaches her that these struggling, contesting masses of men are more or less enraged children, tormented and driven by bigger boys than themselves to fall upon each other and slay without thought--she may sometimes think wistfully that had they sought her counsel they might have found some better way out of their quarrel than the killing of their brothers--but, until lately, her rôle through all the centuries has been the mistaken one of submission to man’s caprice or ordainment, and any attempt at individuality on her part has been decried as a perversion of sex. Now the question of sex, reduced to first principles, appears to be that woman should find her sole content as the “vessel” of man’s pleasure--the breeder and nurse of his offspring and no more. This great war has somewhat altered the lines of the masculine perspective, for men have been forced to admit that women can do all their work as well as themselves, and sometimes better. They can even build ships and aeroplanes, and all this without losing the spirit of womanliness. Strange as it may seem, the woman who might lately have been seen hammering at the keel of a “Dreadnought” can prove herself soft-handed in tending the wounded, and most reverently loving in her last cares for the dying and the dead. She has mastered her nerves--those “Early Victorian” nerves which shuddered fastidiously at the sight of blood, and sent their hysterical owners into a swoon when dangers or difficulties arose, in order to create fresh confusion; she knows the great secret of self-control, and the wonderful vigour and courage which are born of that fine quality. There are very few women nowadays who scream at the sight of a mouse! But this was considered quite “the proper thing” to do in Jane Austen days, just as in some of the queer old novels written before the grand romances of Sir Walter Scott, the heroines invariably “fainted away” when the lover of the piece declared his passion. Women know that “lover of the piece” fairly well by this time, and all his limitations--sufficiently, at any rate, to be convinced that there is nothing in him worth even a pretended “swoon,” though there may be much that _is_ worth cherishing, guiding, and inspiring to the best purposes. Not every man is like a certain one I wot of, who, after being nursed for three months in a friend’s house, said to that friend and hostess on the day he left in restored health,--“If you want a man to like you, never do anything for him!” This was not said in jest, but in grim and churlish earnest. It was a curious recompense for three months’ watchful anxiety and care, but I dare say she realised then, if never before, that “one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Fortunately there are few such