The Ideal State 241 



to the English nation from the foisting of the parlia- 

 mentary suffrage upon those not only incapable of, but 

 totally unfitted for its exercise. No doubt there is 

 present to her mind the danger to the maternal faculty, 

 which is a prime necessity of the State. The attitude 

 of such a woman ought to arrest the attention of all 

 thinking men and women. We say "thinking" ad- 

 visedly, because the supporters of this unbalanced, ill- 

 thought-out scheme for woman's emancipation (so- 

 called) are not those as a rule for whose judgment we 

 feel inclined to entertain much respect. We can only 

 trust that all women who have come within the spell of 

 Mrs. Humphry Ward's literary work will give heed to 

 her earnest and most disinterested warning upon this 

 very serious matter. 



As we have pointed out, Mrs. Ward has not hesitated 

 to designate this suffrage agitation as unpatriotic, and 

 so much so that its success would weaken and hamper 

 the English State. But she has gone further in that 

 she has drawn attention to the " dark and dangerous " 

 side of this movement, and Miss Godden, in a letter to 

 the " Times," emphasises this very serious aspect of 

 the question. An examination of the sixpenny books 

 and pamphlets to be purchased at " suffrage shops " 

 in the districts of Kensington, Paddington, and Charing 

 Cross Road proves the present suffrage movement to 

 be deeply involved in an unnatural and unseemly agita- 

 tion quite distinct from purely political views. And 

 the statements in these publications are not only un- 

 seemly, they are absurd, untrue, and unscientific. As 

 Miss Godden points out : " Suffrage physiology teaches 

 that ' woman's organism is more complex, and her 

 totality of function larger than those of any other thing 

 inhabiting our earth. Therefore her position in the 

 scale of life is the most exalted, the most sovereign 

 one.' ' Science has abundantly proved that the male 

 Q 



