“In the face of many distressing misunderstandings I am certain that if a minority of women in every country would clearly express their convictions they would find that they spoke not for themselves alone but for those men for whom the war has been a laceration,--‘an abdication of the spirit.’ Such women would doubtless formulate the scruples of certain soldiers whose ‘mouths are stopped by courage,’ men who months ago with closed eyes rushed to the defence of their countries. “It may also be true that as the early days of this war fused us all into an overwhelming sense of solidarity until each felt absolutely at one with all his fellow-countrymen, so the sensitiveness to differences is greatly intensified and the dissenting individual has an exaggerated sense of isolation. I try to convince myself that this is the explanation of my abominable and constant loneliness, which is almost unendurable. “I have never been a Feminist and have always remained quite unmoved by the talk of the peculiar contribution women might make to the State, but during the last dreadful months, in spite of women’s widespread enthusiasm for the war and their patriotic eagerness to make the supreme sacrifice, I have become conscious of an unalterable cleavage between Militarism and Feminism. The Militarists believe that government finally rests upon a basis of physical force, and in a crisis such as this, Militarism, in spite of the spiritual passion in war, finds its expression in the crudest forms of violence. “It would be absurd for women even to suggest equal rights in a world governed solely by physical force, and Feminism must necessarily assert the ultimate supremacy of moral agencies. Inevitably the two are in eternal opposition. “I have always agreed with the Feminists that, so far as force plays a great part in the maintenance of an actual social order, it is due to the presence of those elements which are in a steady process of elimination; and of course as society progresses the difficulty arising from woman’s inferiority in physical strength must become proportionately less. One of the most wretched consequences of war is that it arrests these beneficent social processes and throws everything back into a coarser mould. The fury of war, enduring but for a few months or years, may destroy slow-growing social products which it will take a century to recreate--the ‘consent of the governed,’ for instance.... “But why do I talk like this! My father would call it one of my untrained and absurd theories about social progress and the functions of government concerning which I know nothing, and would say that I had no right to discuss the matter in this time of desperate struggle. Nevertheless it is better for me in these hideous long days and nights to drive my mind forward even to absurd conclusions than to let it fall into one of those vicious circles in which it goes round and round to no purpose.”