Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/186

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
178
THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT

inferior, and women, he alleges, are held in contempt by the men of India. If the men of India once realise that they are governed by a Parliament elected partly by women, their rage will be ungovernable, they will revolt, and we shall lose the best part of our Empire! The implication of this argument is beyond all words distasteful to honourable and fair-minded British men. It implies that, because the men of India think lightly of women, the men of Great Britain are to lower their own standard for the sake of the material profit that India represents. It is an argument that is intolerable to women, especially in view of the fact that no evidence is supplied to indicate that this catastrophe would follow. The men of India honoured their queen, the great white queen, Victoria. They have women rulers amongst themselves; and the wise men of India know that upon the development of their own women depends very largely their future position in the world.

'But,' says the mournful anti-suffragist, 'the affairs with which a great State is concerned are grave and complex, too grave and too complex for the feminine understanding. The modern State depends upon those things in which women can take no active part and about which they can know nothing, questions of diplomacy, high finance, naval and military matters, peace and war.' One