cuss these questions, in magazines they
edit and mostly write themselves, said that his arguments were all
conducted from the man's point of view, and were most reprehensible.
Their own chief aim at present is to protect the mothers of
illegitimate children, and this seems a natural and proper thing for
the women of any community to do. Otherwise they are not a united
body. There are moderates and immoderates amongst them, and as I am a
moderate myself in such matters, I think those who go all lengths are
lunatics. It makes one open one's eyes to go to Germany to-day with
one's old-fashioned ideas of the German Frau, and hear what she is
doing in her desire to reform society and inaugurate a new code of
morals. She does not even wait till she is married to speak with
authority. On the contrary, she says that marriage is degrading, and
that temporary unions are more to the honour and profit of women.
"Dear Aunt S.," I heard of one girl writing to a venerable relative,
"I want you to congratulate me on my happiness. I am about to be
united with the man I love, and we shall live together (_in freier
Ehe_) till one of us is tired of it." A German lady of wide views and
worldly knowledge told me a girl had lately sent her a little volume
of original poems that she could only describe as unfit for
publication; yet she knew the girl and thought her a harmless
creature. She was presumably a goose who wanted to cackle in chorus.
This same lady met another girl in the gallery of an artist who
belonged to what Mr. Gilbert calls the "fleshly school." "Ah!" said
the girl to my friend, "this is where I feel at home." One of these
immoderates, on the authority of Plato, recommended at a public
meeting that girls should do gymnastics unclothed. Some of them are
men-haters, some in the interests of their sex are all for free love.
None of them accept the domination of men in theory, so I think that
the facts of life in their own country must often be unpleasantly
forced on them. I discussed the movement, which is a marked one in
Germany at present, with two women whose experience and good sense
made their opinion valuable. But they did not agree. One said that the
excesses of these people were the outcome of long repression, and
would wear out in time. The other thought the movement would go on and
grow; which was as much as to say that she thought the old morals were
dead. Undoubtedly they are dead in some sets in Germany to-day. You
h