Militarism and the Rise of Woman 263 



The fine spirit of international brotherhood of 

 Socialism has been largely nullified by the belief 

 in the efllicacy of military force to achieve social 

 and political results. Thus Hyndman and other 

 leaders of the British Socialist Party have sup- 

 ported the great war which began in 19 14 in order 

 to "crush German militarism," while the Ger- 

 man Social Democrats have supported the same 

 war for the purpose of "crushing the Russian 

 autocracy." 



The rise of woman, one of the most remarkable 

 spiritual, intellectual, political and economic 

 movements in the history of the world, is inti- 

 mately connected with the question of the place 

 of force in civilization. In so far as it succeeds, it 

 results from a diminution in the role of physical 

 force in human society. It is possible to arrange 

 the European nations in the order of the position 

 which is accorded to woman and this order corre- 

 sponds closely with the decline in the role of 

 physical force, and the stage of civilization which 

 has been attained. Beginning with Turkey where 

 women have almost no rights and where the whole 

 history has been a catalog of battles, we can trace 

 this parallelism as we ascend to, say, the Scandina- 

 vian countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and 

 Finland, where women have almost complete 

 political and economic equality with men, where 

 the role of physical force reaches a minimum, and 

 where, by tests of low percentage of illiteracy, 



