The right to vote must of course be combined with the right to be elected to office. We hear the cry: “How ridiculous it would be to behold a woman on the platform of the Diet!” Yet there are other states where women have ascended to the platforms of parliaments, and we, too, have long since become accustomed to see women on platforms in their meetings and conventions. In North America women appear on the pulpit and in the jury-box; why not on the platform of the Diet? The first woman to be elected to the Diet will know how to impress the other members. When the first workingmen were elected to the Diet they, too, were the objects of cheap wit, and it was asserted that workingmen would soon recognize the folly of electing men of their type. But the working-class representatives quickly succeeded in winning respect, and at present their opponents fear that there may be too many of them. Frivolous jesters exclaim: “But picture a pregnant woman on the platform of the Diet; how shocking!” Yet the same gentlemen consider it quite proper that pregnant women should be employed at occupations which shockingly degrade their womanly dignity and decency and undermine their health. That man is a wretch, indeed, who dares to ridicule a pregnant woman. The very thought that his mother was in the same condition before she gave him birth must drive the blood to his cheeks in shame, and the other thought, that his wife’s being in the same condition may mean the fulfillment of his fondest hopes, must silence him.[183] ~The woman who gives birth to children is serving the community at least as well as the man who risks his life in defence of the country.~ For she gives birth to and educates the future soldiers, far too many of whom must sacrifice their lives on the battlefield. Moreover, every woman ~risks her life~ in becoming a mother. All our mothers have faced death in giving us life, and many of them have perished. In Prussia, for instance, the number of deaths in child-birth--including the victims of puerperal fever--by far exceeds the number of deaths from typhoid. During 1905 and 1906 0.73 and 0.62 per cent. of typhoid patients died. But among 10,000 women 2.13 and 1.97 per cent. died in child-birth. “How would conditions have developed,” Professor Herff rightly remarks, “if men were subjected to these sufferings to the same extent? Would not the utmost measures be resorted to?”[184] ~The number of women who die in child-birth, or are left sickly as a result of same, is far greater than the number of men who die or are wounded on the battlefield.~ From 1816 to 1876, in Prussia alone, no less than 321,791 women fell victims of puerperal fever; that is an annual average of 5363. In England, from 1847 to 1901, 213,533 women died in child-birth, and still, notwithstanding all hygienic measures, no less than 4000 die annually.[185]