Part 29 (1/2)

But for filling sh.e.l.ls and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps--all valuable duties, it is true, in the crisis we have pa.s.sed through, and indispensable to carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and tender to the trite and ba.n.a.l, from the vital and essential to the merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense.

Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest in Humanity, has been now honoured--but woman the bus-conductor, ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a s.p.a.ce from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a hideous revulsion of barbarism.

How, if the G.o.ds ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind, they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one s.e.x had--and forfeited--to requite the other's finest merit.

How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent grat.i.tude to the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who saved the Empire--For achievement stamped with the high and unique quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy second-best in doing things that men have always done.

The G.o.ds must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse, hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing, inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth and less fiction. For the G.o.ds alone know how that kindlier, purer and more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex and widest exercise of faculty of any human task.

Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and mortified by centuries of man's ingrat.i.tude--when not contempt.

Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and tradition bound them faithful to their oars.

Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now:

Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row the old Galley of Life--since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill!

And yet--Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their strength elsewhere?

II

In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating--not the value of masculine work done by the s.e.x during War, because this was, of course, invaluable and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive.

Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and every other difference between the standards, training, and employment of the s.e.xes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of the other s.e.x in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human progress.

Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?)

No more than twenty-five found courage to say their ”No's” like honest gentleman.

Yet far from Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt having been a burning need blazing in the hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth.

And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that different order of mind which characterises the woman-s.e.x, to deal with it effectively.

The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members.

III

As with every other human function, there are two departments of politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.

It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration, and his uncompromising sternness--pitilessness, if need be--to deal with and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in Statesmans.h.i.+p which are indispensable to materialise a people's prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of _men_. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve these issues in material results.

Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been supplemented by an equally virile Statesmans.h.i.+p, the War, having begun, would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it would never have begun.

If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely, for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for adulterating British statesmans.h.i.+p with Femaleness.

The presence of a masculine woman in a house--whether this be writ with a small or a capital letter--far from stiffening the manly calibre of weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a committee of mixed s.e.x is to realise this.

Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation--but not in the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's true political sphere and her chiefest concern--because she and the child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be relieved of problems their s.e.x is unqualified to deal with. While more time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best fitted to administer.

As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of s.e.x intervening, members of neither s.e.x are capable of doing their best work while in a.s.sociation with the other. s.e.x-rivalries are stirred, or s.e.x-antagonisms. Either of which range the s.e.xes on opposite sides; thus precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender s.e.x-ascendancy.

Which, making one s.e.x dominate or defer to the other, precludes intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both.