I propose to show that this conservative attitude is inspired by an entirely false reading of history. True it is that the recent course of woman's development recalls a drama that has been played on the planet's stage time after time. In the first act we have the "womanly woman," absorbed in the cradle and the distaff, clothed in quiet matronly virtues, content to hear news of the great world without from her stronger mate. In the second act new and disturbing types come on, women impatient of child-bearing, women that chafe at the barriers and cry for freedom and justice, women that would go out with man into the battle of life. The third act--the act in which men begin to listen--has so constantly ended in tragedy that many confidently look for the same issue now, if we dally with the demands of the women as those others did. It is a plausible anxiety, yet it arises solely from a superficial and perverse reading of history. In the first place, this assumption that nations run through a life-curve like individuals needs serious qualification. There is no inner law that nations shall be born and die, like the men and women who compose them. To the student of science or history a law is but a description of the way in which things have invariably acted, and will presumably act again in the same circumstances. But the circumstances in this case are the same no longer. The conditions of national existence are radically different from what they were when the procession of great empires passed over the stage of the world. Then, almost invariably, the situation was that one virile race entrenched itself in a strong capital and flung out its frontiers on every side, while smaller races watched on the bracing hills all round for the softness of muscle that city-life and parasitic habits would bring. Nerve and brain mattered far less in those days of heavy arms and armour. When you shortened your spear and lightened your shield, the vigorous barbarian knew that his hour had come; the frontier-walls crumbled under his pressure, and he took over the heritage of civilisation. That situation has passed away for ever. There is not one world-power to-day, with a chafing surge of barbarians beating on its shores, but a dozen great nations, and a new thing in the world that we call the balance of power. Softness of muscle is of less account, as a regiment of city clerks can annihilate an army of barbarians. Victory goes to intelligence and nerve. A nation may die still, but assuredly there is no inner law demanding that it must. That impressive march across the stage of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Ethiopia, Greece, Rome, and Venice gives no precedent for our time.