standpoint as now.
It is true that the change has not yet, except in very few women,
reached deep enough to the realities of the things that most matter.
Women have to learn to utilise every advantage of their nature, not
one side only. They will do this; because they will come to have truer
and stronger motives. They are beginning even now to be sifted clean
through the sieve of work. The waste of womanhood cannot for long
continue.

One great and hopeful sign is a new consciousness among all women of
personal responsibility to their own sex. The most fruitful outgrowth
from the present agitation for the rights of citizens--the Vote! the
symbol of this awakening--is a solidarity unknown among women before,
which now binds them in one common purpose. Yet there is a possible
danger lurking in this enthusiasm. Women will gain nothing by
snatching at reform. Many have no eyes to see the beyond; they are
hurried forward by a cry of wrongs, while others are held back by fear
of change. Woman is by her temperament inclined to do too much or to
do nothing. Looked at from this standpoint of the immediate present,
when only the semi-hysterical and illogical aspects of the struggle
are manifest, the future may appear dark. The revolution is
accompanied by much noise and violence. Perhaps this is inevitable. I
do not know. There is, what must seem to many of us who stand outside
the fight, a terrible wastage, a straining and a shattering of the
forces of life and love. To earn salvation quickly and riotously may
not, indeed, be the surest way. It may be only a further development
of the sin of woman, the wastage of her womanhood.

Women say that the fault rests with men. Again I do not know.
Certainly it is much easier and pleasanter to see the mote in our
brother's eye than it is to recognise a possible beam as clouding our
own sight. One of the worst results of the protection of woman by man
is that he has had to bear her sins. Women have grown accustomed to
this; they do not even know how greatly their sex shields them. They
will not readily yield up their scapegoat or sacrifice their
privileges. But the personal responsibility that is making itself felt
among women must teach them to be ready to answer for their own
actions, and, if need be, to pay for them. Freedom carries with it the
acceptance of responsibility. Women must accept this: they are working
towards it.

In a new and free relationship of the sexes women have