Books of the Month. 



405 



issues of political crises. We know that it was a long 

 time before the fathers of the Christian Church could 

 be convinced that women had souls, and the fact is 

 still regarded as not proven by many of the learned 

 theologians of Islam. Even after the admission had 

 been extorted that woman possessed a soul, the 

 majority of men continue to have grave doubts whether 

 in the political sphere women had the balance, the 

 sanity, the judgment, which so conspicuously distin- 

 guish the male voter. But the sobriety and good- 

 >cnse, the skill and perseverance shown by women in 

 their struggle to obtain recognition for their claims 

 had convinced a majority of the House of Commons 

 that even in politics woman might be regarded as a 

 rational being capable of forming a \aluable opinion 

 on questions of State. Suddenly, at the last moment, 

 some of their leaders seem to have been inspired by 

 the devil to destroy, so far as they were concerned, 

 at one fell swoop the reputation of their sex for 

 political instinct and ordinary common sense. It is not 

 only that their actions were criminal. What was much 

 more serious was the arguments by which they 

 attempted to defend them. Because the movements 

 by which men won their rights have been accom- 

 panied by excesses of violence — excesses never sanc- 

 tioned and always deplored by their leaders — therefore, 

 they argued, our leaders are justified in embarking 

 upon a campaign for the destruction of the property of 

 unoffending tradesmen. 



It must be admitted that one Cabinet Jlinister — 

 Mr. Hobhouse — played the part of agent provocateur 

 by recalling the sack of Bristol at the time of the 

 Reform Bill of 1S32. In vain, says Scripture, is the 

 net spread in the sight of any bird. But birds must have 

 more sense than some women. They rushed ^nto the 

 snare, and they are suffering the consequences. The 

 best parallel that can be suggested to the political imbt- 

 cility of their action would be to try and imagine Mr. 

 Parnell on the e\ e of the introduction of the Home 

 Rule Bill organi>ing a great movement for the cutting 

 off of the tails of cattle on all the grazing farms of 

 Ireland. The immediate result would have been 

 the abandonment of the Home Rule Bill. But 

 nothing will convince some of the window-smashers 

 that because occasionally successful political move- 

 ments have been accompanied by sporadic acts of 

 violence directed against political opponents, which 

 the leaders deplored, therefore the secret of success is 

 for their leaders to organise the perpetration of criminal 

 outrages upon the property of unoffending neutrals. 

 What can you do with such creatures in politics ? 

 men are asking in despair. They may be angels in 

 the home, but if this is the way they reason, 

 Heaven help the State in whose counsels they have 

 .1 voice I 



I frankly and unreservedly admit that the window- 

 smashers and their backers may he quite right in their 

 logic, which secm> to me illngic. and v.e men may he all 

 «rong. But whether we he right or wrong, there is 

 such a hopeless incomp-itibility between our ideas and 



those who defend window-smashing that it is dif- 

 ficult to see how we can work together profitably in 

 politics. We cannot both be right. We might as well 

 try to work a sum in arithmetic together when one of 

 us belie\'cd two and two made four, and the other 

 believed they made five. 



When the public mind is agitated by the sudden 

 discovery that women, able and clever women, .seem 

 capable of suddenly acting in a fashion which is 

 indicative of imbecility, it may not be amiss to 

 notice some of the many books appearing in the last 

 few weeks which discuss the creature woman from 

 various points of view. Are these window-smashers and 

 their backers fair samples of their sex.' Are women really 

 made like that ? For woman always remains a more 

 or less illusive mystery to man, as man is a more or 

 less insoluble enigma to woman. The whole subject 

 is one well worthy of careful consideration. For 

 my own part I am not in the least disposed to 

 generalise from the window-smashing craze, and to 

 assume that a tendency to go mad is an essential 

 part of the female temperament. That such a 

 tendency is inherent in all human beings we know 

 by sad experience. No one who recalls the frenzy which 

 precipitated the Boer war can afford to throw stones 

 at window-smashers. Instead of saddling Woman with 

 the responsibility for the recent outbreak, it would he 

 more just to attribute this one great false step to the 

 effect of almost uninterrupted success in turning the 

 heads of a few leaders. The Clement's Inn chiefs suc- 

 cumbed to the subtle temptation which lured Napoleon 

 to Moscow. After all, if there be some foolish women 

 Nature can hardly be blamed for providing them to 

 match us men, who have never failed on critical occa- 

 sions to produce a fair quantum of political lunatics. 

 It ought also to be remembered that women are 

 operating in a field in which they have had compara- 

 ti\eK- little experience. Their impatience is the natural 

 result of their unacquaintance with the sluggish nature 

 of the forces with which politicians have to deal. Their 

 enthusiasm, their heroism, their self-sacrifice arc all 

 their own, 



I,— EDWARD CARPENTER'S NEW BOOK. 



In " The Drama of Love and Death : a Study of 

 Human Evolution and Tran.sfiguration " (G. Allen. 

 5s.) Mr. Edward Carpenter has given us the rellections 

 of a profound thinker who is at once a poet, a pliilo- 

 sopher, a mystic, and a scientist. He begins from the 

 very beginning in his study of the creature Woman, for 

 he starts from the first evolution of sex in the protozoa. 

 Mr. Carpenter bases the claim for equality on funda- 

 mental principles. Mrs. Swiney wrote a hook som< 

 time ago to prove that man was a comparatively lati 

 and very clumsy invention for starting the conception 

 of a new lite, and she proi laimed with exultation ihat 

 before long he would be superseded as useless, Woman 

 being, with a little chemical stimulus, quite capable ol 



