work for all men to do, necessarily extended to the women. It is not
good, in the United States, for any one, woman hardly more than man, to
be idle.

Women being compelled to organise their own lives for themselves, they
carried into that organisation the spirit of energy and enthusiasm which
filled the air of the young and growing communities. Finding work to
their hands to do, they have done it--taking, and in the process fitting
themselves to take, a much more prominent part in the communal life than
is borne by their sisters in England or than those sisters are to-day,
in the mass, qualified to assume. Precisely so (as often in English
history) do women, in some beleaguered city or desperately pressed
outpost, turn soldiers. No share in, or credit for, the result is to be
assigned to any peculiar forethought, deference, or chivalrousness on
the part of the men, their fellows in the fight. It is to the women that
credit belongs.

And while we are thus comparing the position of women in America with
their position in England, it is to be noted that so excellent an
authority among Frenchmen as M. Paul Cambon, in speaking of the position
of women in England, uses precisely the same terms as an Englishman must
use when speaking of the conditions in America. Americans have gone a
step farther--are a shade more "Feminist"--than the English, impelled,
as has been seen, by the peculiar conditions of their growing
communities in a new land. But it is only a step and accidental.

Englishmen looking at America are prone to see only that step, whereas
what Frenchmen or other Continental Europeans see is that both
Englishmen and Americans together have travelled far, and are still
travelling fast, on a path quite other than that which is followed by
the rest of the peoples. In their view, the single step is
insignificant. What is obvious is that in both is working the same
Anglo-Saxon trait--the tendency to insist upon the independence of the
individual. Feminism--the spirit of feminine progress--is repugnant to
the Roman Catholic Church; and we would not look to see it developing
strongly in Roman Catholic countries. But, what is more important, it is
repugnant to all peoples which set the community or the state or the
government before the individual, that is to say to all peoples except
the Anglo-Saxon.

We see here again, as we shall see in many things, how powerless have
been all other racial elements in the United Sta