On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce, even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.--And this upon their own ground.
On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and apt.i.tudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience, forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of masculine abilities and aims and bent, now subst.i.tuted for them in the s.e.x. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and n.o.bility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women, wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are man"s response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also.
There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the world"s most strenuous labours and the world"s administration are their natural functions, and that upon their s.e.x, accordingly, rests the responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions.
This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the other s.e.x, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded, and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his s.e.x, in himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their work for him enables him to keep.
The spirit and pride of s.e.x are normal and inspiring, and are the expression of that impulse which has directed, in both s.e.xes, the contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest or spur to achievement in a role that has become equally woman"s.
Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride in his man"s mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Caesar, Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent election, which was signalised by being woman"s first authorised entry into the political arena--and was characterised by nothing so much as by man"s indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the other s.e.x has invaded the field.
Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of her s.e.x. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And this s.e.x-pride and spirit in her would be n.o.bly intensified and uplifted to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but a.s.sured of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions, by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards to minister to it.
A potent factor in man"s impotence to hold his own either in moral or achievement, when pitted directly against the other s.e.x, is that power many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of persons--and of men, particularly--in a.s.sociation with them. The highest levels of work and inspiration are the product of _reserve_ and surplus forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and capacities are possible.
The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and const.i.tutional vigour of men a.s.sociated with them in work was strikingly shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition and depression now crippling our industrial output.
I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-s.e.x. If so, it is not only because man"s cause is woman"s, but, moreover, because his present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him dangerously blind to the truth of woman"s power; misdirection whereof from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and the Race. _Find the woman!_ said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications.
Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the lower-grade males--narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained neurasthenics--whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked, because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality--and which are the birthright of every human being--only the few have any conception.
It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving, India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by emanc.i.p.ating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women"s vital powers are exhausted by laborious and de-s.e.xing occupations, the moral and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb.
V
Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly _half our manhood was declared_ unfitted for man"s elementary duty of fighting for his country (559 per cent. only being cla.s.sed in Grade I.). All that our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism, which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his.
England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race, fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful wives and admirable mothers.
Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those of colliery-districts, are employed industrially.
While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners only 57 could even be pa.s.sed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57 men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II., while 169 were graded III. and IV.
Again, _Why_? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were "alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of men for military service, even those cla.s.sed first were by no means necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many pa.s.sed were later shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline.
Further, that so many as 20 _per cent._ of the young manhood of our highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious circ.u.mstance.
Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: "_At least a million_." A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire with a C3 population."
This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation"s young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men, the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succ.u.mbed in death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the vicissitudes of active service.
The _British Medical Journal_ has published figures showing that of 2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards--the men const.i.tuting "a fair sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"--_only 1 in 3 could be cla.s.sed in Grade I_. That is, out of every 150 members of our British manhood in its best years of life, _only 50 were up to the mark in health and normality_.
The _Journal_ comments on "this ma.s.s of physical inefficiency, with all its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country."
Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries, stated that "_appalling facts about the health of the nation have been disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting authorities_." One of the most startling and disquieting of these disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis.
Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages, and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is true--in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the experiment.
Sooner or later--and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too late!--the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more and more diverts the nation"s life-resources into merely economic channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output, the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and dangerous will be the task of its eradication.
The reform should have come while _man_ still held the reins securely in his grasp--ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and powers behind an enfranchised woman-s.e.x; to intimidate and out-number his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and, moreover, deteriorated by de-s.e.xing training, become every year less and less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial struggle, woman-instincts and apt.i.tudes will become ever more warped and enfeebled in them.
The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance.
There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty civilisations snuffed out before us--the major portion of the community having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn, opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to sow death and destruction wholesale.
Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race--that had failed.
VI
Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet order of our British const.i.tution are heard, from time to time, the rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval, the critical gap between War and Peace.
Woman is Nature"s peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home, knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human elements into social unities--families, friendly communities, townships and peoples--by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of charity and intuitive understanding.
"_Keep the Home-fires burning!_" sang our soldiers. No considerations of The British Const.i.tution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or two-room lodgings--as equally in hereditary mansions--it was, our gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph.
My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative.
Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that nothing so characterises the great ma.s.s of latter-day working women as a smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human.
The innumerable orders and cla.s.ses of our sociology are as inevitable as they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb.
As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although pa.s.sive and reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the s.e.x in affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood"s rights of rule to a s.e.x disqualified by its native non-conformability to rule in national and international policies.
Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man"s, they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being necessarily _reform_.
Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry--even in frequent revolution. This element of instability is Ireland"s curse, the flaw in her people"s splendid Celtic faculty.
In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism--whereof Feminism is the female rendering.
It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her s.e.x, adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed s.e.x, Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile s.e.x-insensibility of the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the weaknesses bred of Effeminacy.
Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who, by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents.
So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman upon equal terms.
Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be sacred or profane, accordingly--that of woman at her best or at her worst--always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in part--for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchis.e.m.e.nt--which disarmed and paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman.
History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct proportion to woman"s waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous breakers ahead.