The Failure of Frightfulness 265 



moral shock is a striking testimony to the imiversal 

 faith of mankind in the fundamental incompati- 

 bility of the true social instincts of woman and 

 the false methods of force and violence which 

 have so often dominated the action of men. 



The essential opposition between militarism* 

 and the rise of woman has been summed up by 

 Grace Isabel Colbron, in The Public, as follows : 



It is this spirit of militarism, the glorification of 

 brute force, and this alone, that has kept woman in 

 political, legal, and economic bondage throughout 

 the ages; and there is still enough of it remaining in 

 our enlightened twentieth century to make the idea 

 of woman's participation in public office and public 

 life a thing to be scoffed at by the majority, ridiculed 

 and opposed. 



It was not any manifestation of superiority of the 

 masculine mind that first threw the chains of political 

 serfhood around one-half of humanity ; it was merely 

 the fact that in the dark ages of the world's history, 

 brute force, that is, militarism in one or another 

 form, reigned supreme. Where brute force was 

 lord, woman with her differently constituted muscular 

 development was considered an inferior being simply 

 because she did not bear arms. 



The philosophy of force has been drawn into 

 the service of race prejudice and has been con- 

 sidered as the justification for innumerable racial 



' See also Militarism v. Feminism; an Enquiry and a Policy 

 Demonstrating that Militarism Involves the Subjection of Women, 

 published by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., Ruskin^House, London. 



