he does, get into
politics--that she assumes to be the practical way of curing the
inferiority of position and of powers which she is willing to admit,
even willing to demonstrate. That a man's life may not be altogether
satisfactory, she declines to believe. The uneasy woman has always
taken it for granted that man is happier than woman. It is an
assumption which is at least discussible.

Her program, too, has the immense advantage of including all that the
new order of things in this country, instituted by the Revolution,
made imperative for women--the schooling, the liberty of action, the
independent pocket book. Because she has formulated these notions so
definitely and has hammered on them so hard, the militant woman
frequently claims that they originated with her, that she is the
_cause_ of the great development in educational opportunities, in
freedom to work and to circulate, in the increasing willingness to
face the facts of life and speak the truth. This claim she should
drop. She is rather the logical result of these notions, their extreme
expression. She has, however, had an enormous influence in keeping
them alive in the great slow-moving mass of women, where the fate of
new ideas rests and where they are always tried out with extreme
caution. Without her the vision of enlarging and liberalizing their
own particular business to meet the needs of the New Democracy which
so exalted the women of the Revolution, would not to-day be as nearly
realized as it is. To speak slightingly of her part in the women's
movement is uncomprehending. She was then, and always has been, a
tragic figure, this woman in the front of the woman's movement--driven
by a great unrest, sacrificing old ideals to attain new, losing
herself in a frantic and frequently blind struggle, often putting back
her cause by the sad illustration she was of the price that must be
paid to attain a result. Certainly no woman who to-day takes it as a
matter of course that she should study what she chooses, go and come
as she will, support herself unquestioned by trade, profession, or
art, work in public or private, handle her own property, share her
children on equal terms with her husband, receive a respectful
attention on platform or before legislature, live freely in the world,
should think with anything but reverence particularly of the early
disturbers of convention and peace, for they were an essential element
in the achievement.

The great st