The consequence is that Englishwomen, no less than women of other nations, are strongly individualistic, and stand like boulders in the stream of modern democracy which is running towards collectivism. It is impossible for the majority of women to sympathise with the collective ideal, since all their instincts run counter to it. In England, particularly, where for centuries the stratification of society has gone quietly on without catastrophic changes, it is hard to believe that, with political power now in their hands, women will easily permit a profound revolution in their modes of life. So long as wages and standards of life are in question, they may well vote with the most progressive, even the most aggressive, party: but the old social landmarks will not be entirely swept away unless the women, too, are swept off their feet by a wave of circumstance or emotion. It will be curious to see how the good Englishwoman modifies the course of history in the near future, as she is bound to do if she in a way succeeds in forcing a compromise between the oncoming of collectivist democracy and her own instinctive conservatism. So far as women are concerned, every layer of society is bound to offer resistance to eruption from below simply for its own safety. In this matter the stationmaster’s wife will not be behind the doctor’s or the works-foreman’s sister behind the vicar’s. If eruption comes at all, instead of the steady but almost imperceptible percolation which is the usual process of social change in this country, it can only come from the lowest layers whose Marias have nothing to lose and everything to gain by a more than usually abrupt effort to rise. If only wise statesmanship can discount the need for any abruptness, this eruption will never occur: the essential changes, in my belief, can be wrought without so ruinous a disturbance as to rend our English homespun into rags, or to snap the threads of that womanly warp which gives it its strength and durability.