Page:Women Wanted.djvu/399

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THE RING AND THE WOMAN
363

arrangements for herself than others have for her in this world where certainly a great deal has gone wrong.

So we have arrived at woman's coming of age. She who used to be by the most ancient family law passed as a chattel from the guardianship of a father to that of a husband, is now to be an individual. It is only now that she could be. In a way they were right yesterday who refused to regard her as a responsible person. For she wasn't. Under the coercion of coverture, she even had to think the way that pleased the person who paid her bills! To-day with a wage envelope in one hand and a ballot in the other, she is as much of a human being as any one else is. As such, she is in a position to find the full status of her own personality. For the first time since history began, she will be under no one else's authority.

No greater revolution than this will have been wrought by the Great World War. It is going to be safe to permit to wives in all lands that they retain their own nationality. The reason is clear: because no one can compel this new woman, even though she is a wife, to be a spy, or anything else that she does not wish to be. Or anything else that she does not wish to be!

In those words, the woman movement of to-day full-throated carols a hope for humanity that has not echoed before in all the epics or the sagas or the inspired revelations since the fall of man. Who