alleged against woman as natural defects by those who have never
for a moment troubled to distinguish between nature and nurture, are an
incapacity to combine with her sisters, petty dishonour in small things,
a blindness to the meaning of "playing the game." It is similarly
alleged by such persons against the lower classes that they also do not
know how to "play the game," and do not understand the spirit of true
sportsmanship, preferring to win anyhow rather than not at all. But
those who conduct the Children's Vacation Schools in London--that
remarkable arrangement by which children are damaged in school time and
educated in holidays--are aware that in a short time children of any
class can be taught to "play the game," if only they can be made to see
it from that point of view. So also women can learn to combine, to be
unselfish, to avoid petty deceits even in games, to obey a captain and
to accept the umpire's decision, when they are taught, as we all have
to be taught, that that is playing the game.

These immense virtues of the new departure must by no means be forgotten
in the course of the reaction which is bound to occur, and is indeed
necessary, against the contemporary practice of trying to demonstrate
that boys and girls are substantially identical. He who pleads for the
golden mean is always abused by extremists of both parties, but is
always justified in the long run, and this is a case where the golden
mean is eminently desirable, being indeed vital, which is much more than
golden. Safety is to be found in our recognition of elementary
physiological principles, assuming from the first that though it is not
difficult to turn a girl into something like a boy, it is not desirable;
and especially in attending carefully, in the case of each individual,
to the indications furnished by that characteristic physiological
function, interference with which necessarily imperils womanhood.

The organism is a whole; it reacts not only to physical strain but to
mental strain. There are parts of the world, including a country no less
distinguished as a pioneer of education than Scotland, where serious
mental strain is now being imposed upon girls at this very period of the
dawn of womanhood, when strain of any kind is especially to be deplored.
Utterly ignoring the facts of physiology, the laws and approximate dates
of human development, official regulations demand that at just such ages
as thirteen, fourteen, and fifte