Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

334
FEMINISM
— the safety of their country, of their children, of themselves.
As in peace they share equally in the benefits of civilisation
mostly made by men, so after war they share equally in the benefits
of victory mostly won (if won at all) by men. Their serv-
ices in war no more entitle them to the vote than their services
in peace, the factor of sufficient force being absent in both cases.
(2) By most of the women who desire the vote, and their
male advocates, reliance is put on the other alternative. It is
evident that if all men were good, individually within each state
obeying of their free will the laws, and collectively between states
refraining from preying upon one another, using only moral principles
for the guidance of their actions, then women, on the
supposition of their having equal intelligence (which children
have not, so that here the distinction is supplied why children
should still be excluded), would be as competent as men to vote
and take part in making, the laws, since their lack of physical
force would no longer be relevant in governmental affairs, when
through the universal obedience the laws automatically execute
themselves. In fact, governments and the division of nationalities
into states would then be of little importance, since the moral
laws of conduct do not need legislation to tell what they are, and
all that would be necessary would be, as advised by the socialists,
some committees of administration in the natural territorial communities
for managing their common interests. Extremes meet,
and as mankind began without government when they were brutes,
they may end without government when they are saints.
Women, however, are not to be placated with this idea of their
being admitted to participation in government only when government
is no longer of importance.^'^ Consequently those who
now wish to participate maintain the entirely inconsistent position
that while government is still needed, men are good enough
to be guided only by opinion and right reason, without the need
of force — that the minority obeys the majority simply out of
respect for the right of the majority to have its way,^^ and that,
though policemen at least, if not soldiers, are still needed, the laws
somehow enforce themselves.^' People, to be sure, do not all
agree as to what is right in all details, and therefore government
11 Thus sixty years ago Paul'na W. Davis said : "The rule of force and fraud
must well nigh be overturned, and learning and religion and the fine arts must
have cultivated mankind into a state of wisdom and justice tempered by most beneficent
affections, before woman can be installed in her highest offices. Presidential
Address at the Woman's Rights Convention, Worcester, 1850, Proceedings, 10. Yet
she desired the vote even then.
12 Cf. Mrs. Jacobi above, p. 3i7n.
13 Cf. W. J. Bryan: "This [the force] argument is seldom offered now [?!], for
the reason that as civilisation advances laws are obeyed because they are an expression
of the public opinion, not merely because they have' power and lead behind
them," Formal Statement published in the newspapers July 17, 1914.