inions on
other subjects equally outside their competence, told us that woman's
suffrage would mean government by women, they being in the majority. For
all other consequences of this gigantic fact they have no concern; not
even the mental capacity to grasp that it must have consequences. But
this, which happens not to be a consequence of it, they are loud to
insist upon. At any rate, they have done this service until the public
at last is acquainted with the demographic fact; and one of the
suffragist leaders some time ago publicly expressed an old argument of
the present writer's that in point of fact this grave supposed
consequence of woman's suffrage need not be feared if only for the
reason that Woman Suffrage would certainly mean increased attention to
infant mortality, and therefore increased control of the morbid causes
which at present account for female preponderance.

It might indeed be added also that, in so far as Woman Suffrage operated
against war, it would contribute in another way to the correction of
this numerical disparity. Not the least of the many evils which have
flowed from the last hideous war in which Great Britain engaged--evils
which glass-eyed politicians have since been exploiting in the interests
of their own charlatanry--is the loss to scores of thousands of women in
this country of the complemental manhood which was destroyed by wounds
and more especially by disease in South Africa. The wickedness with
which that war was entered upon, and the criminal ignorance with which
it was mismanaged, and the elementary principles of hygiene defied, have
their consequences to-day in much of the unmated and handicapped
womanhood of Great Britain. It may be noted that polygamy as a
historical phenomenon has commonly and necessarily been associated with
militarism. Large destruction of manhood by war leads to a numerical
excess of women, and polygamy is a consequence. If the consequences in
our modern civilization are less decent than polygamy, which would
affront the beautiful minds that are unconcerned for Regent Street,
surely our duty is more strenuously than ever to combat the causes
which, as we see, are quite definitely traceable and controllable.

The increased attention paid to the conditions of child life is of
direct service to the nation, and to womanhood in especial, by tending
to interfere with the excessive and unnecessary mortality of boys. As we
have elsewhere observed, the male orga