War, with brutal butchery, destroys millions of human lives for paltry purposes: to avenge the death of an Archduke or to gain commercial profits. But if life is a thing of meaning, a divine gift, to be divinely handled, for divine purposes; if life is, as mankind generally professes, the chain upon which the evolution towards super-conscious man is strung, the chain upon which the pearl of immortality is hung; if life, as an abstract possession of the human race, is all this, and more besides, then war, which aims at the destruction of this priceless gift, is a cosmic blunder, which only devils bent upon the annihilation of the human race, could have conceived. Militarism has, in one country at least, reached a climax, and I believe it is because we women feel in our souls, that life has a meaning, and a value, which are in danger of being lost in militarism, that we are, at this moment, instinctively asking society to give us a share in safeguarding the destinies of those human lives, for which Nature has made us specially responsible. The idea of votes for women, or justice for women, is not here my concern; the idea, which, as a result of my small experiences, engulfs all others, is the necessity of votes for life, justice for humankind. This can only be achieved by the suppression of war, and wars will never be suppressed by men alone. Man, says Bacon, loves danger better than travail; man, says Nietzsche, loves danger better than play. Men still regard battles as magnified football scrums; war is still for many men a glorified sport, as letters from the soldiers at the front daily testify. "The spirit of our boys was splendid. They simply loved the fun." "He simply turned from right to left, and fired as if he was in a shooting saloon. It was the best bit of fancy shooting I have seen," etc. (_Daily News_, Saturday, July 8th, 1916). The courage required for facing battlefields is superb, but that same courage, channelled for moral, social, and spiritual purposes, might create a new heaven and earth. The more "natural" it seems for man to fight his fellow-man, in order to acquire supremacy, the more urgent is it for society to intervene; for the progress of man is secured, not by yielding to natural environment, but by resistance to environment.