Nowadays, there are far more careers open to women. We have women barristers and women doctors in practice. True, the Church is closed against them, to its own great detriment, as it could easily find picked women, eloquent in the pulpit and capable in parish management, to replace the male refuse it has too often to fall back on; but women can do without ecclesiastical careers now that the secular and civil services are open. The closing of the fighting services is socially necessary, as women are far too valuable to have their lives risked in battle as well as in child-bearing. If ninety out of every hundred young men were killed we could recover from the loss, but if ninety out of every hundred young women were killed there would be an end of the nation. That is why modern war, which is not confined to battle fields, and rains high explosives and poison gas on male and female civilians indiscriminately in their peaceful homes, is so much more dangerous than war has ever been before. Besides, women are now educated as men are: they go to the universities and to the technical colleges if they can afford it; and, as Domestic Service is now an educational subject with special colleges, a woman can get trained for such an occupation as that of manageress of a hotel as well as for the practice of law or medicine, or for accountancy and actuarial work. In short, nothing now blocks a woman’s way into business or professional life except prejudice, superstition, old-fashioned parents, shyness, snobbery, ignorance of the contemporary world, and all the other imbecilities for which there is no remedy but modern ideas and force of character. Therefore it is no use facing the world today with the ideas of a hundred years ago, when it was practically against the law for a lady who was not a genius to be self-supporting; for if she kept a shop, or even visited at the house of a woman who kept a shop, she was no lady. I know better than you (because I am probably much older) that the tradition of those bad old times still wastes the lives of single gentlewomen to a deplorable extent; but, for all that, every year sees an increase in the activities of gentlewomen outside the home in business and the professions, and even in perilous professional exploration and adventure with a cinematographic camera in attendance.