Alarmists declare that the women’s movement has caused sex-antagonism. The preceding chapter has, I think, disposed of such an absurd contention, and most thoughtful persons do not defend a statement so easily refuted by literature and history. Others, with more evidence, maintain that sex-antagonism was there, a kind of sleeping dog, which the women’s movement has now aroused to vicious attack. It is contended that the progressive women have stirred up normal women to rebellion, which they never would, of themselves, have contemplated; that the progressives are mischief-makers, who have put dangerous ideas into the heads of people quite unable to carry them out, and the only result will be unrest, disputes, discomfort for men, misery for women, and a final vindication of the supreme authority of man. The progressives will probably suffer severe castigation, but the normal women will be kissed and forgiven, for, after all, they are only women and not quite accountable for their actions; and, besides, men are really rather fond of the silly things. This is the style of the commoner leader-writer in the anti-suffrage newspapers. We may grant at once that the women’s movement would not be where it is but for its leaders. This is no less true of the women’s than of all other movements. A movement does not really get going until leaders have arisen from the ranks; the absurd mistake is to suppose that a movement can be _kept_ going for any prolonged time by the leaders only, without support from the ranks. For many years, the women found it exceedingly difficult to raise up leaders from their own ranks, and a very considerable lead was, as a matter of fact, given by men. But until women had arisen who could carry on the leadership, progress was slow, partial and almost entirely academic. If John Stuart Mill’s searching analysis of women’s position had not made women think for themselves; if his disgust and shame had raised no answering disgust and shame in women, they would have proved themselves fit for the position they were in, and would never have begun to stir out of it. And about that time there were other men too, ready to help, William Lloyd Garrison and Walt Whitman and Mazzini and Stansfeld and Henry Sidgwick, and all the other people who did the pioneer work of helping the women to get education and training, and of opening up careers to them. Then, although the active reformers among men have been comparatively recent, there have been great artists, from the earliest times, who have held the mirror up to man and shown him his deeds towards woman. No feminist tract can compare for propaganda purposes with _The Trojan Women_, or _Medea_. Tell a woman she has no concern with the great imperial matters of peace and war, and then give her the first to read! She will have a whole armoury of answers. Or try to crush a woman who has read the second with reproaches concerning the treachery and falseness of womankind! If the sex-war is as old as