These are the women whom not even the peace treaty will discharge from their “national service.” Every Great Push makes more of them. And the rest must always watch fearfully, furtively looking down Main Street as the years of strife wear on. Who shall say whether she too may be conscripted to “carry on” for life. For this is the way of war with women. Like this, the trust and the burden have rested heavier and heavier on woman’s heart and hands. Millions of men will never be able to lift it for her again. No one knows when the others will. Men must fight and women must work. So many men are with the flag at the front. So many men are under the crosses, the acres of crosses with which battle fields are planted. So many men are in wheel chairs and on crutches. Women are carrying on in the home, in industry, in commerce and in the professions. Then why not in the State? [Illustration: MRS. MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT OF LONDON For fifty years leader of the Constitutional Suffragists, whose cause triumphed in 1918 when Parliament granted the franchise to English women. ] Little by little, in every land, a voice began to be heard. It was the voice of the man with the flag, and the man with the twisted face, and the man with the blinded eyes, and the voice of Sergeant Jones. It said what the sergeant said, when from his wheel chair by the window where his wife had placed it, he took his pen in hand and wrote back to Endell Street hospital: “Women are wonderful. I didn’t know before. Now I wouldn’t be afraid for you even to have the vote.” And curiously enough, what the man in the wheel chair and the man in the Green Park and the Tuileries and the man with the flag was saying, the newspapers began to repeat as if it had been syndicated round the world. The _Matin_ had it in Paris, the _Times_ in London and the _Tageblatt_ in Berlin. You read it in all languages: “The women are wonderful. We didn’t know before.” GREATEST DRIVE FOR DEMOCRACY Then couldn’t a woman who could cast a shell, cast a vote? Parliaments trembled on the verge of letting her try.