Project Gutenberg Australia



Title: Three Guineas (1938)
Author: Virginia Woolf
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0200931.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted: November 2002
Date most recently updated: November 2002

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca

Production notes: Notes indicated in the eBook are located ,in chapter
                  order, at the end of the eBook.

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title:      Three Guineas (1938)
Author:     Virginia Woolf


(Notes indicated in the eBook are located ,in chapter order,
at the end of the eBook.)



One


Three years is a long time to leave a letter unanswered, and your
letter has been lying without an answer even longer than that.  I
had hoped that it would answer itself, or that other people would
answer it for me.  But there it is with its question--How in your
opinion are we to prevent war?--still unanswered.

It is true that many answers have suggested themselves, but none
that would not need explanation, and explanations take time.  In
this case, too, there are reasons why it is particularly difficult
to avoid misunderstanding.  A whole page could be filled with
excuses and apologies; declarations of unfitness, incompetence,
lack of knowledge, and experience: and they would be true.  But
even when they were said there would still remain some difficulties
so fundamental that it may well prove impossible for you to
understand or for us to explain.  But one does not like to leave so
remarkable a letter as yours--a letter perhaps unique in the
history of human correspondence, since when before has an educated
man asked a woman how in her opinion war can be prevented?--
unanswered.  Therefore let us make the attempt; even if it is
doomed to failure.

In the first place let us draw what all letter-writers instinctively
draw, a sketch of the person to whom the letter is addressed.
Without someone warm and breathing on the other side of the page,
letters are worthless.  You, then, who ask the question, are a
little grey on the temples; the hair is no longer thick on the top
of your head.  You have reached the middle years of life not without
effort, at the Bar; but on the whole your journey has been
prosperous.  There is nothing parched, mean or dissatisfied in your
expression.  And without wishing to flatter you, your prosperity--
wife, children, house--has been deserved.  You have never sunk into
the contented apathy of middle life, for, as your letter from an
office in the heart of London shows, instead of turning on your
pillow and prodding your pigs, pruning your pear trees--you have a
few acres in Norfolk--you are writing letters, attending meetings,
presiding over this and that, asking questions, with the sound of
the guns in your ears.  For the rest, you began your education at
one of the great public schools and finished it at the university.

It is now that the first difficulty of communication between us
appears.  Let us rapidly indicate the reason.  We both come of
what, in this hybrid age when, though birth is mixed, classes still
remain fixed, it is convenient to call the educated class.  When we
meet in the flesh we speak with the same accent; use knives and
forks in the same way; expect maids to cook dinner and wash up
after dinner; and can talk during dinner without much difficulty
about politics and people; war and peace; barbarism and
civilization--all the questions indeed suggested by your letter.
Moreover, we both earn our livings.  But...those three dots
mark a precipice, a gulf so deeply cut between us that for three
years and more I have been sitting on my side of it wondering
whether it is any use to try to speak across it.  Let us then ask
someone else--it is Mary Kingsley--to speak for us.  'I don't know
if I ever revealed to you the fact that being allowed to learn
German was ALL the paid-for education I ever had.  Two thousand
pounds was spent on my brother's, I still hope not in vain.'[1]
Mary Kingsley is not speaking for herself alone; she is speaking,
still, for many of the daughters of educated men.  And she is not
merely speaking for them; she is also pointing to a very important
fact about them, a fact that must profoundly influence all that
follows: the fact of Arthur's Education Fund.  You, who have read
Pendennis, will remember how the mysterious letters A.E.F. figured
in the household ledgers.  Ever since the thirteenth century
English families have been paying money into that account.  From
the Pastons to the Pendennises, all educated families from the
thirteenth century to the present moment have paid money into that
account.  It is a voracious receptacle.  Where there were many sons
to educate it required a great effort on the part of the family to
keep it full.  For your education was not merely in book-learning;
games educated your body; friends taught you more than books or
games.  Talk with them broadened your outlook and enriched your
mind.  In the holidays you travelled; acquired a taste for art; a
knowledge of foreign politics; and then, before you could earn your
own living, your father made you an allowance upon which it was
possible for you to live while you learnt the profession which now
entitles you to add the letters K.C. to your name.  All this came
out of Arthur's Education Fund.  And to this your sisters, as Mary
Kingsley indicates, made their contribution.  Not only did their
own education, save for such small sums as paid the German teacher,
go into it; but many of those luxuries and trimmings which are,
after all, an essential part of education--travel, society,
solitude, a lodging apart from the family house--they were paid
into it too.  It was a voracious receptacle, a solid fact--Arthur's
Education Fund--a fact so solid indeed that it cast a shadow over
the entire landscape.  And the result is that though we look at the
same things, we see them differently.  What is that congregation of
buildings there, with a semi-monastic look, with chapels and halls
and green playing-fields?  To you it is your old school; Eton or
Harrow; your old university, Oxford or Cambridge; the source of
memories and of traditions innumerable.  But to us, who see it
through the shadow of Arthur's Education Fund, it is a schoolroom
table; an omnibus going to a class; a little woman with a red nose
who is not well educated herself but has an invalid mother to
support; an allowance of £50 a year with which to buy clothes, give
presents and take journeys on coming to maturity.  Such is the
effect that Arthur's Education Fund has had upon us.  So magically
does it change the landscape that the noble courts and quadrangles
of Oxford and Cambridge often appear to educated men's daughters[2]
like petticoats with holes in them, cold legs of mutton, and the
boat train starting for abroad while the guard slams the door in
their faces.

The fact that Arthur's Education Fund changes the landscape--the
halls, the playing grounds, the sacred edifices--is an important
one; but that aspect must be left for future discussion.  Here we
are only concerned with the obvious fact, when it comes to
considering this important question--how we are to help you prevent
war--that education makes a difference.  Some knowledge of
politics, of international relations of economics, is obviously
necessary in order to understand the causes which lead to war.
Philosophy, theology even, might come in usefully.  Now you the
uneducated, you with an untrained mind, could not possibly deal
with such questions satisfactorily.  War, as the result of
impersonal forces, is you will agree beyond the grasp of the
untrained mind.  But war as the result of human nature is another
thing.  Had you not believed that human nature, the reasons, the
emotions of the ordinary man and woman, lead to war, you would not
have written asking for our help.  You must have argued, men and
women, here and now, are able to exert their wills; they are not
pawns and puppets dancing on a string held by invisible hands.
They can act, and think for themselves.  Perhaps even they can
influence other people's thoughts and actions.  Some such reasoning
must have led you to apply to us; and with justification.  For
happily there is one branch of education which comes under the
heading 'unpaid-for education'--that understanding of human beings
and their motives which, if the word is rid of its scientific
associations, might be called psychology.  Marriage, the one great
profession open to our class since the dawn of time until the year
1919; marriage, the art of choosing the human being with whom to
live life successfully, should have taught us some skill in that.
But here again another difficulty confronts us.  For though many
instincts are held more or less in common by both sexes, to fight
has always been the man's habit, not the woman's.  Law and practice
have developed that difference, whether innate or accidental.
Scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a
woman's rifle; the vast majority of birds and beasts have been
killed by you, not by us; and it is difficult to judge what we do
not share.[3]

How then are we to understand your problem, and if we cannot, how
can we answer your question, how to prevent war?  The answer based
upon our experience and our psychology--Why fight?--is not an
answer of any value.  Obviously there is for you some glory, some
necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we have never felt
or enjoyed.  Complete understanding could only be achieved by blood
transfusion and memory transfusion--a miracle still beyond the
reach of science.  But we who live now have a substitute for blood
transfusion and memory transfusion which must serve at a pinch.
There is that marvellous, perpetually renewed, and as yet largely
untapped aid to the understanding of human motives which is
provided in our age by biography and autobiography.  Also there is
the daily paper, history in the raw.  There is thus no longer any
reason to be confined to the minute span of actual experience which
is still, for us, so narrow, so circumscribed.  We can supplement
it by looking at the picture of the lives of others.  It is of
course only a picture at present, but as such it must serve.  It is
to biography then that we will turn first, quickly and briefly, in
order to attempt to understand what war means to you.  Let us
extract a few sentences from a biography.  First, this from a
soldier's life:


I have had the happiest possible life, and have always been working
for war, and have now got into the biggest in the prime of life for
a soldier... Thank God, we are off in an hour.  Such a
magnificent regiment!  Such men, such horses!  Within ten days I
hope Francis and I will be riding side by side straight at the
Germans.[4]


To which the biographer adds:


From the first hour he had been supremely happy, for he had found
his true calling.


To that let us add this from an airman's life:


We talked of the League of Nations and the prospects of peace and
disarmament.  On this subject he was not so much militarist as
martial.  The difficulty to which he could find no answer was that
if permanent peace were ever achieved, and armies and navies ceased
to exist, there would be no outlet for the manly qualities which
fighting developed, and that human physique and human character
would deteriorate.[5]


Here, immediately, are three reasons which lead your sex to fight;
war is a profession; a source of happiness and excitement; and it
is also an outlet for manly qualities, without which men would
deteriorate.  But that these feelings and opinions are by no means
universally held by your sex is proved by the following extract
from another biography, the life of a poet who was killed in the
European war: Wilfred Owen.


Already I have comprehended a light which never will filter into
the dogma of any national church: namely, that one of Christ's
essential commands was:  Passivity at any price!  Suffer dishonour
and disgrace, but never resort to arms.  Be bullied, be outraged,
be killed; but do not kill... Thus you see how pure
Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism.


And among some notes for poems that he did not live to write are
these:


The unnaturalness of weapons... Inhumanity of war... The
insupportability of war... Horrible beastliness of war...
Foolishness of war.[6]


From these quotations it is obvious that the same sex holds very
different opinions about the same thing.  But also it is obvious,
from today's newspaper, that however many dissentients there are,
the great majority of your sex are today in favour of war.  The
Scarborough Conference of educated men, the Bournemouth Conference
of working men are both agreed that to spend £300,000,000 annually
upon arms is a necessity.  They are of opinion that Wilfred Owen
was wrong; that it is better to kill than to be killed.  Yet since
biography shows that differences of opinion are many, it is plain
that there must be some one reason which prevails in order to bring
about this overpowering unanimity.  Shall we call it, for the sake
of brevity, 'patriotism'?  What then, we must ask next, is this
'patriotism' which leads you to go to war?  Let the Lord Chief
Justice of England interpret it for us:


Englishmen are proud of England.  For those who have been trained
in English schools and universities, and who have done the work of
their lives in England, there are few loves stronger than the love
we have for our country.  When we consider other nations, when we
judge the merits of the policy of this country or of that, it is
the standard of our own country that we apply... Liberty has
made her abode in England.  England is the home of democratic
institutions... It is true that in our midst there are many
enemies of liberty--some of them, perhaps, in rather unexpected
quarters.  But we are standing firm.  It has been said that an
Englishman's Home is his Castle.  The home of Liberty is in
England.  And it is a castle indeed--a castle that will be defended
to the last... Yes, we are greatly blessed, we Englishmen.[7]


That is a fair general statement of what patriotism means to an
educated man and what duties it imposes upon him.  But the educated
man's sister--what does 'patriotism' mean to her?  Has she the same
reasons for being proud of England, for loving England, for
defending England?  Has she been 'greatly blessed' in England?
History and biography when questioned would seem to show that her
position in the home of freedom has been different from her
brother's; and psychology would seem to hint that history is
not without its effect upon mind and body.  Therefore her
interpretation of the word 'patriotism' may well differ from his.
And that difference may make it extremely difficult for her to
understand his definition of patriotism and the duties it imposes.
If then our answer to your question, 'How in your opinion are we to
prevent war?' depends upon understanding the reasons, the emotions,
the loyalties which lead men to go to war, this letter had better
be torn across and thrown into the waste-paper basket.  For it
seems plain that we cannot understand each other because of these
differences.  It seems plain that we think differently according as
we are born differently; there is a Grenfell point of view; a
Knebworth point of view; a Wilfred Owen point of view; a Lord Chief
Justice's point of view and the point of view of an educated man's
daughter.  All differ.  But is there no absolute point of view?
Can we not find somewhere written up in letters of fire or gold,
'This is right.  This wrong'?--a moral judgement which we must all,
whatever our differences, accept?  Let us then refer the question
of the rightness or wrongness of war to those who make morality
their profession--the clergy.  Surely if we ask the clergy the
simple question:  'Is war right or is war wrong?' they will give us
a plain answer which we cannot deny.  But no--the Church of
England, which might be supposed able to abstract the question from
its worldly confusions, is of two minds also.  The bishops
themselves are at loggerheads.  The Bishop of London maintained
that 'the real danger to the peace of the world today were the
pacifists.  Bad as war was dishonour was far worse.'[8]  On the
other hand, the Bishop of Birmingham[9] described himself as an
'extreme pacifist... I cannot see myself that war can be
regarded as consonant with the spirit of Christ.'  So the Church
itself gives us divided counsel--in some circumstances it is right
to fight; in no circumstances is it right to fight.  It is
distressing, baffling, confusing, but the fact must be faced; there
is no certainty in heaven above or on earth below.  Indeed the more
lives we read, the more speeches we listen to, the more opinions we
consult, the greater the confusion becomes and the less possible it
seems, since we cannot understand the impulses, the motives, or the
morality which lead you to go to war, to make any suggestion that
will help you to prevent war.

But besides these pictures of other people's lives and minds--these
biographies and histories--there are also other pictures--pictures
of actual facts; photographs.  Photographs, of course, are not
arguments addressed to the reason; they are simply statements of
fact addressed to the eye.  But in that very simplicity there may
be some help.  Let us see then whether when we look at the same
photographs we feel the same things.  Here then on the table before
us are photographs.  The Spanish Government sends them with patient
pertinacity about twice a week.*  They are not pleasant photographs
to look upon.  They are photographs of dead bodies for the most
part.  This morning's collection contains the photograph of what
might be a man's body, or a woman's; it is so mutilated that it
might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig.  But those
certainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of
a house.  A bomb has torn open the side; there is still a birdcage
hanging in what was presumably the sitting-room, but the rest of
the house looks like nothing so much as a bunch of spillikins
suspended in mid air.


* Written in the winter of 1936-7.


Those photographs are not an argument; they are simply a crude
statement of fact addressed to the eye.  But the eye is connected
with the brain; the brain with the nervous system.  That system
sends its messages in a flash through every past memory and present
feeling.  When we look at those photographs some fusion takes place
within us; however different the education, the traditions behind
us, our sensations are the same; and they are violent.  You, Sir,
call them 'horror and disgust'.  We also call them horror and
disgust.  And the same words rise to our lips.  War, you say, is an
abomination; a barbarity; war must be stopped at whatever cost.
And we echo your words.  War is an abomination; a barbarity; war
must be stopped.  For now at last we are looking at the same
picture; we are seeing with you the same dead bodies, the same
ruined houses.

Let us then give up, for the moment, the effort to answer your
question, how we can help you to prevent war, by discussing the
political, the patriotic or the psychological reasons which lead
you to go to war.  The emotion is too positive to suffer patient
analysis.  Let us concentrate upon the practical suggestions which
you bring forward for our consideration.  There are three of them.
The first is to sign a letter to the newspapers; the second is to
join a certain society; the third is to subscribe to its funds.
Nothing on the face of it could sound simpler.  To scribble a name
on a sheet of paper is easy; to attend a meeting where pacific
opinions are more or less rhetorically reiterated to people who
already believe in them is also easy; and to write a cheque in
support of those vaguely acceptable opinions, though not so easy,
is a cheap way of quieting what may conveniently be called one's
conscience.  Yet there are reasons which make us hesitate; reasons
into which we must enter, less superficially, later on.  Here it is
enough to say that though the three measures you suggest seem
plausible, yet it also seems that, if we did what you ask, the
emotion caused by the photographs would still remain unappeased.
That emotion, that very positive emotion, demands something more
positive than a name written on a sheet of paper; an hour spent
listening to speeches; a cheque written for whatever sum we can
afford--say one guinea.  Some more energetic, some more active
method of expressing our belief that war is barbarous, that war is
inhuman, that war, as Wilfred Owen put it, is insupportable,
horrible and beastly seems to be required.  But, rhetoric apart,
what active method is open to us?  Let us consider and compare.
You, of course, could once more take up arms--in Spain, as before
in France--in defence of peace.  But that presumably is a method
that having tried you have rejected.  At any rate that method is
not open to us; both the Army and the Navy are closed to our sex.
We are not allowed to fight.  Nor again are we allowed to be
members of the Stock Exchange.  Thus we can use neither the
pressure of force nor the pressure of money.  The less direct but
still effective weapons which our brothers, as educated men,
possess in the diplomatic service, in the Church, are also denied
to us.  We cannot preach sermons or negotiate treaties.  Then again
although it is true that we can write articles or send letters to
the Press, the control of the Press--the decision what to print,
what not to print--is entirely in the hands of your sex.  It is
true that for the past twenty years we have been admitted to the
Civil Service and to the Bar; but our position there is still very
precarious and our authority of the slightest.  Thus all the
weapons with which an educated man can enforce his opinion are
either beyond our grasp or so nearly beyond it that even if we used
them we could scarcely inflict one scratch.  If the men in your
profession were to unite in any demand and were to say:  'If it is
not granted we will stop work', the laws of England would cease to
be administered.  If the women in your profession said the same
thing it would make no difference to the laws of England whatever.
Not only are we incomparably weaker than the men of our own class;
we are weaker than the women of the working class.  If the working
women of the country were to say:  'If you go to war, we will
refuse to make munitions or to help in the production of goods,'
the difficulty of war-making would be seriously increased.  But if
all the daughters of educated men were to down tools tomorrow,
nothing essential either to the life or to the war-making of the
community would be embarrassed.  Our class is the weakest of all
the classes in the state.  We have no weapon with which to enforce
our will.[10]

The answer to that is so familiar that we can easily anticipate it.
The daughters of educated men have no direct influence, it is true;
but they possess the greatest power of all; that is, the influence
that they can exert upon educated men.  If this is true, if, that
is, influence is still the strongest of our weapons and the only
one that can be effective in helping you to prevent war, let us,
before we sign your manifesto or join your society, consider what
that influence amounts to.  Clearly it is of such immense
importance that it deserves profound and prolonged scrutiny.  Ours
cannot be profound; nor can it be prolonged; it must be rapid and
imperfect--still, let us attempt it.

What influence then have we had in the past upon the profession
that is most closely connected with war--upon politics?  There
again are the innumerable, the invaluable biographies, but it would
puzzle an alchemist to extract from the massed lives of politicians
that particular strain which is the influence upon them of women.
Our analysis can only be slight and superficial; still if we narrow
our inquiry to manageable limits, and run over the memoirs of a
century and a half we can hardly deny that there have been women
who have influenced politics.  The famous Duchess of Devonshire,
Lady Palmerston, Lady Melbourne, Madame de Lieven, Lady Holland,
Lady Ashburton--to skip from one famous name to another--were all
undoubtedly possessed of great political influence.  Their famous
houses and the parties that met in them play so large a part in the
political memoirs of the time that we can hardly deny that English
politics, even perhaps English wars, would have been different had
those houses and those parties never existed.  But there is one
characteristic that all those memoirs possess in common; the names
of the great political leaders--Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Peel,
Canning, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone--are sprinkled on every
page; but you will not find either at the head of the stairs
receiving the guests, or in the more private apartments of the
house, any daughter of an educated man.  It may be that they were
deficient in charm, in wit, in rank, or in clothing.  Whatever the
reason, you may turn page after page, volume after volume, and
though you will find their brothers and husbands--Sheridan at
Devonshire House, Macaulay at Holland House, Matthew Arnold at
Lansdowne House, Carlyle even at Bath House, the names of Jane
Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot do not occur; and though
Mrs Carlyle went, Mrs Carlyle seems on her own showing to have
found herself ill at ease.

But, as you will point out, the daughters of educated men may have
possessed another kind of influence--one that was independent of
wealth and rank, of wine, food, dress and all the other amenities
that make the great houses of the great ladies so seductive.  Here
indeed we are on firmer ground, for there was of course one
political cause which the daughters of educated men had much at
heart during the past 150 years: the franchise.  But when we
consider how long it took them to win that cause, and what labour,
we can only conclude that influence has to be combined with wealth
in order to be effective as a political weapon, and that influence
of the kind that can be exerted by the daughters of educated men is
very low in power, very slow in action, and very painful in use.[11]
Certainly the one great political achievement of the educated man's
daughter cost her over a century of the most exhausting and menial
labour; kept her trudging in processions, working in offices,
speaking at street corners; finally, because she used force, sent
her to prison, and would very likely still keep her there, had it
not been, paradoxically enough, that the help she gave her brothers
when they used force at last gave her the right to call herself, if
not a full daughter, still a stepdaughter of England.[12]

Influence then when put to the test would seem to be only fully
effective when combined with rank, wealth and great houses.  The
influential are the daughters of noblemen, not the daughters of
educated men.  And that influence is of the kind described by a
distinguished member of your own profession, the late Sir Ernest
Wild.


He claimed that the great influence which women exerted over men
always had been, and always ought to be, an indirect influence.
Man liked to think he was doing his job himself when, in fact, he
was doing just what the woman wanted, but the wise woman always let
him think he was running the show when he was not.  Any woman who
chose to take an interest in politics had an immensely greater
power without the vote than with it, because she could influence
many voters.  His feeling was that it was not right to bring women
down to the level of men.  He looked up to women, and wanted to
continue to do so.  He desired that the age of chivalry should not
pass, because every man who had a woman to care about him liked to
shine in her eyes.[13]


And so on.

If such is the real nature of our influence, and we all recognize
the description and have noted the effects, it is either beyond our
reach, for many of us are plain, poor and old; or beneath our
contempt, for many of us would prefer to call ourselves prostitutes
simply and to take our stand openly under the lamps of Piccadilly
Circus rather than use it.  If such is the real nature, the
indirect nature, of this celebrated weapon, we must do without it;
add our pigmy impetus to your more substantial forces, and have
recourse, as you suggest, to letter signing, society joining and
the drawing of an occasional exiguous cheque.  Such would seem to
be the inevitable, though depressing, conclusion of our inquiry
into the nature of influence, were it not that for some reason,
never satisfactorily explained, the right to vote,[14] in itself by
no means negligible, was mysteriously connected with another right
of such immense value to the daughters of educated men that almost
every word in the dictionary has been changed by it, including the
word 'influence'.  You will not think these words exaggerated if we
explain that they refer to the right to earn one's living.

That, Sir, was the right that was conferred upon us less than
twenty years ago, in the year 1919, by an Act which unbarred the
professions.  The door of the private house was thrown open.  In
every purse there was, or might be, one bright new sixpence in
whose light every thought, every sight, every action looked
different.  Twenty years is not, as time goes, a long time; nor is
a sixpenny bit a very important coin; nor can we yet draw upon
biography to supply us with a picture of the lives and minds of the
new-sixpenny owners.  But in imagination perhaps we can see the
educated man's daughter, as she issues from the shadow of the
private house, and stands on the bridge which lies between the old
world and the new, and asks, as she twirls the sacred coin in her
hand, 'What shall I do with it?  What do I see with it?'  Through
that light we may guess everything she saw looked different--men
and women, cars and churches.  The moon even, scarred as it is in
fact with forgotten craters, seemed to her a white sixpence, a
chaste sixpence, an altar upon which she vowed never to side with
the servile, the signers-on, since it was hers to do what she liked
with--the sacred sixpence that she had earned with her own hands
herself.  And if checking imagination with prosaic good sense, you
object that to depend upon a profession is only another form of
slavery, you will admit from your own experience that to depend
upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend
upon a father.  Recall the joy with which you received your first
guinea for your first brief, and the deep breath of freedom that
you drew when you realized that your days of dependence upon
Arthur's Education Fund were over.  From that guinea, as from one
of the magic pellets to which children set fire and a tree rises,
all that you most value--wife, children, home--and above all that
influence which now enables you to influence other men, have
sprung.  What would that influence be if you were still drawing £40
a year from the family purse, and for any addition to that income
were dependent even upon the most benevolent of fathers?  But it is
needless to expatiate.  Whatever the reason, whether pride, or love
of freedom, or hatred of hypocrisy, you will understand the
excitement with which in 1919 your sisters began to earn not a
guinea but a sixpenny bit, and will not scorn that pride, or deny
that it was justly based, since it meant that they need no longer
use the influence described by Sir Ernest Wild.

The word 'influence' then has changed.  The educated man's daughter
has now at her disposal an influence which is different from any
influence that she has possessed before.  It is not the influence
which the great lady, the Siren, possesses; nor is it the influence
which the educated man's daughter possessed when she had no vote;
nor is it the influence which she possessed when she had a vote but
was debarred from the right to earn her living.  It differs,
because it is an influence from which the charm element has been
removed; it is an influence from which the money element has been
removed.  She need no longer use her charm to procure money from
her father or brother.  Since it is beyond the power of her family
to punish her financially she can express her own opinions.  In
place of the admirations and antipathies which were often
unconsciously dictated by the need of money she can declare her
genuine likes and dislikes.  In short, she need not acquiesce; she
can criticize.  At last she is in possession of an influence that
is disinterested.

Such in rough and rapid outlines is the nature of our new weapon,
the influence which the educated man's daughter can exert now that
she is able to earn her own living.  The question that has next to
be discussed, therefore, is how can she use this new weapon to help
you to prevent war?  And it is immediately plain that if there is
no difference between men who earn their livings in the professions
and women who earn their livings, then this letter can end; for if
our point of view is the same as yours then we must add our
sixpence to your guinea; follow your methods and repeat your words.
But, whether fortunately or unfortunately, that is not true.  The
two classes still differ enormously.  And to prove this, we need
not have recourse to the dangerous and uncertain theories of
psychologists and biologists; we can appeal to facts.  Take the
fact of education.  Your class has been educated at public schools
and universities for five or six hundred years, ours for sixty.
Take the fact of property.[15]  Your class possesses in its own
right and not through marriage practically all the capital, all the
land, all the valuables, and all the patronage in England.  Our
class possesses in its own right and not through marriage
practically none of the capital, none of the land, none of the
valuables, and none of the patronage in England.  That such
differences make for very considerable differences in mind and
body, no psychologist or biologist would deny.  It would seem to
follow then as an indisputable fact that 'we'--meaning by 'we' a
whole made trained and are so differently influenced by memory and
tradition--must still differ in some essential respects from 'you',
whose body, brain and spirit have been so differently trained and
are so differently influenced by memory and tradition.  Though we
see the same world, we see it through different eyes.  Any help we
can give you must be different from that you can give yourselves,
and perhaps the value of that help may lie in the fact of that
difference.  Therefore before we agree to sign your manifesto or
join your society, it might be well to discover where the
difference lies, because then we may discover where the help lies
also.  Let us then by way of a very elementary beginning lay before
you a photograph--a crudely coloured photograph--of your world as
it appears to us who see it from the threshold of the private
house; through the shadow of the veil that St Paul still lays upon
our eyes; from the bridge which connects the private house with the
world of public life.

Your world, then, the world of professional, of public life, seen
from this angle undoubtedly looks queer.  At first sight it is
enormously impressive.  Within quite a small space are crowded
together St Paul's, the Bank of England, the Mansion House, the
massive if funereal battlements of the Law Courts; and on the other
side, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.  There, we
say to ourselves, pausing, in this moment of transition on the
bridge, our fathers and brothers have spent their lives.  All these
hundreds of years they have been mounting those steps, passing in
and out of those doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, money-
making, administering justice.  It is from this world that the
private house (somewhere, roughly speaking, in the West End) has
derived its creeds, its laws, its clothes and carpets, its beef and
mutton.  And then, as is now permissible, cautiously pushing aside
the swing doors of one of these temples, we enter on tiptoe and
survey the scene in greater detail.  The first sensation of
colossal size, of majestic masonry is broken up into a myriad
points of amazement mixed with interrogation.  Your clothes in the
first place make us gape with astonishment.[16]  How many, how
splendid, how extremely ornate they are--the clothes worn by the
educated man in his public capacity!  Now you dress in violet; a
jewelled crucifix swings on your breast; now your shoulders are
covered with lace; now furred with ermine; now slung with many
linked chains set with precious stones.  Now you wear wigs on your
heads; rows of graduated curls descend to your necks.  Now your
hats are boat-shaped, or cocked; now they mount in cones of black
fur; now they are made of brass and scuttle shaped; now plumes of
red, now of blue hair surmount them.  Sometimes gowns cover your
legs; sometimes gaiters.  Tabards embroidered with lions and
unicorns swing from your shoulders; metal objects cut in star
shapes or in circles glitter and twinkle upon your breasts.
Ribbons of all colours--blue, purple, crimson--cross from shoulder
to shoulder.  After the comparative simplicity of your dress at
home, the splendour of your public attire is dazzling.

But far stranger are two other facts that gradually reveal
themselves when our eyes have recovered from their first amazement.
Not only are whole bodies of men dressed alike summer and winter--a
strange characteristic to a sex which changes its clothes according
to the season, and for reasons of private taste and comfort--but
every button, rosette and stripe seems to have some symbolical
meaning.  Some have the right to wear plain buttons only; others
rosettes; some may wear a single stripe; others three, four, five
or six.  And each curl or stripe is sewn on at precisely the right
distance apart; it may be one inch for one man, one inch and a
quarter for another.  Rules again regulate the gold wire on the
shoulders, the braid on the trousers, the cockades on the hats--but
no single pair of eyes can observe all these distinctions, let
alone account for them accurately.

Even stranger, however, than the symbolic splendour of your clothes
are the ceremonies that take place when you wear them.  Here you
kneel; there you bow; here you advance in procession behind a man
carrying a silver poker; here you mount a carved chair; here you
appear to do homage to a piece of painted wood; here you abase
yourselves before tables covered with richly worked tapestry.  And
whatever these ceremonies may mean you perform them always
together, always in step, always in the uniform proper to the man
and the occasion.

Apart from the ceremonies such decorative apparel appears to us at
first sight strange in the extreme.  For dress, as we use it, is
comparatively simple.  Besides the prime function of covering the
body, it has two other offices--that it creates beauty for the eye,
and that it attracts the admiration of your sex.  Since marriage
until the year 1919--less than twenty years ago--was the only
profession open to us, the enormous importance of dress to a woman
can hardly be exaggerated.  It was to her what clients are to you--
dress was her chief, perhaps her only, method of becoming Lord
Chancellor.  But your dress in its immense elaboration has
obviously another function.  It not only covers nakedness,
gratifies vanity, and creates pleasure for the eye, but it serves
to advertise the social, professional, or intellectual standing of
the wearer.  If you will excuse the humble illustration, your dress
fulfils the same function as the tickets in a grocer's shop.  But,
here, instead of saying 'This is margarine; this pure butter; this
is the finest butter in the market,' it says, 'This man is a clever
man--he is Master of Arts; this man is a very clever man--he is
Doctor of Letters; this man is a most clever man--he is a Member of
the Order of Merit.'  It is this function--the advertisement
function--of your dress that seems to us most singular.  In the
opinion of St Paul, such advertisement, at any rate for our sex,
was unbecoming and immodest; until a very few years ago we were
denied the use of it.  And still the tradition, or belief, lingers
among us that to express worth of any kind, whether intellectual or
moral, by wearing pieces of metal, or ribbon, coloured hoods or
gowns, is a barbarity which deserves the ridicule which we bestow
upon the rites of savages.  A woman who advertised her motherhood
by a tuft of horsehair on the left shoulder would scarcely, you
will agree, be a venerable object.

But what light does our difference here throw upon the problem
before us?  What connection is there between the sartorial
splendours of the educated man and the photograph of ruined houses
and dead bodies?  Obviously the connection between dress and war is
not far to seek; your finest clothes are those that you wear as
soldiers.  Since the red and the gold, the brass and the feathers
are discarded upon active service, it is plain that their expensive
and not, one might suppose, hygienic splendour is invented partly
in order to impress the beholder with the majesty of the military
office, partly in order through their vanity to induce young men to
become soldiers.  Here, then, our influence and our difference
might have some effect; we, who are forbidden to wear such clothes
ourselves, can express the opinion that the wearer is not to us a
pleasing or an impressive spectacle.  He is on the contrary a
ridiculous, a barbarous, a displeasing spectacle.  But as the
daughters of educated men we can use our influence more effectively
in another direction, upon our own class--the class of educated
men.  For there, in courts and universities, we find the same love
of dress.  There, too, are velvet and silk, fur and ermine.  We can
say that for educated men to emphasize their superiority over other
people, either in birth or intellect, by dressing differently, or
by adding titles before, or letters after their names are acts that
rouse competition and jealousy--emotions which, as we need scarcely
draw upon biography to prove, nor ask psychology to show, have
their share in encouraging a disposition towards war.  If then we
express the opinion that such distinctions make those who possess
them ridiculous and learning contemptible we should do something,
indirectly, to discourage the feelings that lead to war.  Happily
we can now do more than express an opinion; we can refuse all such
distinctions and all such uniforms for ourselves.  This would be a
slight but definite contribution to the problem before us--how to
prevent war; and one that a different training and a different
tradition puts more easily within our reach than within yours.[17]

But our bird's-eye view of the outside of things is not altogether
encouraging.  The coloured photograph that we have been looking at
presents some remarkable features, it is true; but it serves to
remind us that there are many inner and secret chambers that we
cannot enter.  What real influence can we bring to bear upon law or
business, religion or politics--we to whom many doors are still
locked, or at best ajar, we who have neither capital nor force
behind us?  It seems as if our influence must stop short at the
surface.  When we have expressed an opinion upon the surface we
have done all that we can do.  It is true that the surface may have
some connection with the depths, but if we are to help you to
prevent war we must try to penetrate deeper beneath the skin.  Let
us then look in another direction--in a direction natural to
educated men's daughters, in the direction of education itself.

Here, fortunately, the year, the sacred year 1919, comes to our
help.  Since that year put it into the power of educated men's
daughters to earn their livings they have at last some real
influence upon education.  They have money.  They have money to
subscribe to causes.  Honorary treasurers invoke their help.  To
prove it, here, opportunely, cheek by jowl with your letter, is a
letter from one such treasurer asking for money with which to
rebuild a women's college.  And when honorary treasurers invoke
help, it stands to reason that they can be bargained with.  We have
the right to say to her, 'You shall only have our guinea with which
to help you rebuild your college if you will help this gentleman
whose letter also lies before us to prevent war.'  We can say to
her, 'You must educate the young to hate war.  You must teach them
to feel the inhumanity, the beastliness, the insupportability of
war.'  But what kind of education shall we bargain for?  What sort
of education will teach the young to hate war?

That is a question that is difficult enough in itself; and may well
seem unanswerable by those who are of Mary Kingsley's persuasion--
those who have had no direct experience of university education
themselves.  Yet the part that education plays in human life is so
important, and the part that it might play in answering your
question is so considerable that to shirk any attempt to see how we
can influence the young through education against war would be
craven.  Let us therefore turn from our station on the bridge
across the Thames to another bridge over another river, this time
in one of the great universities; for both have rivers, and both
have bridges, too, for us to stand upon.  Once more, how strange it
looks, this world of domes and spires, of lecture rooms and
laboratories, from our vantage point!  How different it looks to us
from what it must look to you!  To those who behold it from Mary
Kingsley's angle--'being allowed to learn German was ALL the paid
education I ever had'--it may well appear a world so remote, so
formidable, so intricate in its ceremonies and traditions that any
criticism or comment may well seem futile.  Here, too, we marvel at
the brilliance of your clothes; here, too, we watch maces erect
themselves and processions form, and note with eyes too dazzled to
record the differences, let alone to explain them, the subtle
distinctions of hats and hoods, of purples and crimsons, of velvet
and cloth, of cap and gown.  It is a solemn spectacle.  The words
of Arthur's song in Pendennis rise to our lips:


     Although I enter not,
     Yet round about the spot
     Sometimes I hover,
     And at the sacred gate,
     With longing eyes I wait,
     Expectant...


and again,


     I will not enter there,
     To sully your pure prayer
     With thoughts unruly.

     But suffer me to pace
     Round the forbidden place,
     Lingering a minute,
     Like outcast spirits, who wait
     And see through Heaven's gate
     Angels within it.


But, since both you, Sir, and the honorary treasurer of the college
rebuilding fund are waiting for answers to your letters we must
cease to hang over old bridges humming old songs; we must attempt
to deal with the question of education, however imperfectly.

What, then, is this 'university education' of which Mary Kingsley's
sisterhood have heard so much and to which they have contributed so
painfully?  What is this mysterious process that takes about three
years to accomplish, costs a round sum in hard cash, and turns the
crude and raw human being into the finished product--an educated
man or woman?  There can be no doubt in the first place of its
supreme value.  The witness of biography--that witness which any
one who can read English can consult on the shelves of any public
library--is unanimous upon this point; the value of education is
among the greatest of all human values.  Biography proves this in
two ways.  First, there is the fact that the great majority of the
men who have ruled England for the past 500 years, who are now
ruling England in Parliament and the Civil Service, have received a
university education.  Second, there is the fact which is even more
impressive if you consider what toil, what privation it implies--
and of this, too, there is ample proof in biography--the fact of
the immense sum of money that has been spent upon education in the
past 500 years.  The income of Oxford University is £435,656 (1933-
4), the income of Cambridge University is £212,000 (1930).  In
addition to the university income each college has its own separate
income, which, judging only from the gifts and bequests announced
from time to time in the newspapers, must in some cases be of
fabulous proportions.[18]  If we add further the incomes enjoyed by
the great public schools--Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, to name
the largest only--so huge a sum of money is reached that there can
be no doubt of the enormous value that human beings place upon
education.  And the study of biography--the lives of the poor, of
the obscure, of the uneducated--proves that they will make any
effort, any sacrifice to procure an education at one of the great
universities.[19]

But perhaps the greatest testimony to the value of education with
which biography provides us is the fact that the sisters of
educated men not only made the sacrifices of comfort and pleasure,
which were needed in order to educate their brothers, but actually
desired to be educated themselves.  When we consider the ruling of
the Church on this subject, a ruling which we learn from biography
was in force only a few years ago--'...I was told that desire
for learning in women was against the will of God,...'[20]--we
must allow that their desire must have been strong.  And if we
reflect that all the professions for which a university education
fitted her brothers were closed to her, her belief in the value of
education must appear still stronger, since she must have believed
in education for itself.  And if we reflect further that the one
profession that was open to her--marriage--was held to need no
education, and indeed was of such a nature that education unfitted
women to practise it, then it would have been no surprise to find
that she had renounced any wish or attempt to be educated herself,
but had contented herself with providing education for her
brothers--the vast majority of women, the nameless, the poor, by
cutting down household expenses; the minute minority, the titled,
the rich, by founding or endowing colleges for men.  This indeed
they did.  But so innate in human nature is the desire for
education that you will find, if you consult biography, that the
same desire, in spite of all the impediments that tradition,
poverty and ridicule could put in its way, existed too among women.
To prove this let us examine one life only--the life of Mary
Astell.[21]  Little is known about her, but enough to show that
almost 250 years ago this obstinate and perhaps irreligious desire
was alive in her; she actually proposed to found a college for
women.  What is almost as remarkable, the Princess Anne was ready
to give her £10,000--a very considerable sum then, and, indeed,
now, for any woman to have at her disposal--towards the expenses.
And then--then we meet with a fact which is of extreme interest,
both historically and psychologically: the Church intervened.
Bishop Burnet was of opinion that to educate the sisters of
educated men would be to encourage the wrong branch, that is to
say, the Roman Catholic branch, of the Christian faith.  The money
went elsewhere; the college was never founded.

But these facts, as facts so often do, prove double-faced; for
though they establish the value of education, they also prove that
education is by no means a positive value; it is not good in all
circumstances, and good for all people; it is only good for some
people and for some purposes.  It is good if it produces a belief
in the Church of England; bad if it produces a belief in the Church
of Rome; it is good for one sex and for some professions, but bad
for another sex and for another profession.

Such at least would seem to be the answer of biography--the oracle
is not dumb, but it is dubious.  As, however, it is of great
importance that we should use our influence through education to
affect the young against war we must not be baffled by the evasions
of biography or seduced by its charm.  We must try to see what kind
of education an educated man's sister receives at present, in order
that we may do our utmost to use our influence in the universities
where it properly belongs, and where it will have most chance of
penetrating beneath the skin.  Now happily we need no longer depend
upon biography, which inevitably, since it is concerned with the
private life, bristles with innumerable conflicts of private
opinion.  We have now to help us that record of the public life
which is history.  Even outsiders can consult the annals of those
public bodies which record not the day-to-day opinions of private
people, but use a larger accent and convey through the mouths of
Parliaments and Senates the considered opinions of bodies of
educated men.

History at once informs us that there are now, and have been since
about 1870, colleges for the sisters of educated men both at Oxford
and at Cambridge.  But history also informs us of facts of such a
nature about those colleges that all attempt to influence the young
against war through the education they receive there must be
abandoned.  In face of them it is mere waste of time and breath to
talk of 'influencing the young'; useless to lay down terms, before
allowing the honorary treasurer to have her guinea; better to take
the first train to London than to haunt the sacred gates.  But, you
will interpose, what are these facts? these historical but
deplorable facts?  Therefore let us place them before you, warning
you that they are taken only from such records as are available to
an outsider and from the annals of the university which is not your
own--Cambridge.  Your judgement, therefore, will be undistorted by
loyalty to old ties, or gratitude for benefits received, but it
will be impartial and disinterested.

To begin then where we left off:  Queen Anne died and Bishop Burnet
died and Mary Astell died; but the desire to found a college for
her own sex did not die.  Indeed, it became stronger and stronger.
By the middle of the nineteenth century it became so strong that a
house was taken at Cambridge to lodge the students.  It was not a
nice house; it was a house without a garden in the middle of a
noisy street.  Then a second house was taken, a better house this
time, though it is true that the water rushed through the dining-
room in stormy weather and there was no playground.  But that house
was not sufficient; the desire for education was so urgent that
more rooms were needed, a garden to walk in, a playground to play
in.  Therefore another house was needed.  Now history tells us that
in order to build this house, money was needed.  You will not
question that fact but you may well question the next--that the
money was borrowed.  It will seem to you more probable that the
money was given.  The other colleges, you will say, were rich; all
derived their incomes indirectly, some directly, from their
sisters.  There is Gray's Ode to prove it.  And you will quote the
song with which he hails the benefactors: the Countess of Pembroke
who founded Pembroke; the Countess of Clare who founded Clare;
Margaret of Anjou who founded Queens'; the Countess of Richmond and
Derby who founded St John's and Christ's.


     What is grandeur, what is power?
     Heavier toil, superior pain.
     What the bright reward we gain?
     The grateful memory of the good.
     Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
     The bee's collected treasures sweet,
     Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
     The still small voice of gratitude.[22]


Here, you will say in sober prose, was an opportunity to repay the
debt.  For what sum was needed?  A beggarly £10,000--the very sum
that the bishop intercepted about two centuries previously.  That
£10,000 surely was disgorged by the Church that had swallowed it?
But churches do not easily disgorge what they have swallowed.  Then
the colleges, you will say, which had benefited, they must have
given it gladly in memory of their noble benefactresses?  What
could £10,000 mean to St John's or Clare or Christ's?  And the land
belonged to St John's.  But the land, history says, was leased; and
the £10,000 was not given; it was collected laboriously from
private purses.  Among them one lady must be for ever remembered
because she gave £1,000; and Anon. must receive whatever thanks
Anon. will consent to receive, because she gave sums ranging from
£20 to £100.  And another lady was able, owing to a legacy from her
mother, to give her services as mistress without salary.  And the
students themselves subscribed--so far as students can--by making
beds and washing dishes, by forgoing amenities and living on simple
fare.  Ten thousand pounds is not at all a beggarly sum when it has
to be collected from the purses of the poor, from the bodies of the
young.  It takes time, energy, brains, to collect it, sacrifice to
give it.  Of course, several educated men were very kind; they
lectured to their sisters; others were not so kind; they refused to
lecture to their sisters.  Some educated men were very kind and
encouraged their sisters; others were not so kind, they discouraged
their sisters.[23]  Nevertheless, by hook or by crook, the day came
at last, history tells us, when somebody passed an examination.
And then the mistresses, principals or whatever they called
themselves--for the title that should be worn by a woman who will
not take a salary must be a matter of doubt--asked the Chancellors
and the Masters about whose titles there need be no doubt, at any
rate upon that score, whether the girls who had passed examinations
might advertise the fact as those gentlemen themselves did by
putting letters after their names.  This was advisable, because, as
the present Master of Trinity, Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M., F.R.S.,
after poking a little justifiable fun at the 'pardonable vanity' of
those who put letters after their names, informs us, 'the general
public who have not taken a degree themselves attach much more
importance to B.A. after a person's name than those who have.  Head
mistresses of schools therefore prefer a belettered staff, so that
students of Newnham and Girton, since they could not put B.A. after
their names, were at a disadvantage in obtaining appointments.'
And in Heaven's name, we may both ask, what conceivable reason
could there be for preventing them from putting the letters B.A.
after their names if it helped them to obtain appointments?  To
that question history supplies no answer; we must look for it in
psychology, in biography; but history supplies us with the fact.
'The proposal, however,' the Master of Trinity continues--the
proposal, that is, that those who had passed examinations might
call themselves B.A.--'met with the most determined opposition...
On the day of the voting there was a great influx of non-
residents and the proposal was thrown out by the crushing majority
of 1707 to 661.  I believe the number of voters has never been
equalled... The behaviour of some of the undergraduates after
the poll was declared in the Senate House was exceptionally
deplorable and disgraceful.  A large band of them left the Senate
House, proceeded to Newnham and damaged the bronze gates which had
been put up as a memorial to Miss Clough, the first Principal.'[24]

Is that not enough?  Need we collect more facts from history and
biography to prove our statement that all attempt to influence the
young against war through the education they receive at the
universities must be abandoned?  For do they not prove that
education, the finest education in the world, does not teach people
to hate force, but to use it?  Do they not prove that education,
far from teaching the educated generosity and magnanimity, makes
them on the contrary so anxious to keep their possessions, that
'grandeur and power' of which the poet speaks, in their own hands,
that they will use not force but much subtler methods than force
when they are asked to share them?  And are not force and
possessiveness very closely connected with war?  Of what use then
is a university education in influencing people to prevent war?
But history goes on of course; year succeeds to year.  The years
change things; slightly but imperceptibly they change them.  And
history tells us that at last, after spending time and strength
whose value is immeasurable in repeatedly soliciting the
authorities with the humility expected of our sex and proper to
suppliants the right to impress head mistresses by putting the
letters B.A. after the name was granted.  But that right, history
tells us, was only a titular right.  At Cambridge, in the year
1937, the women's colleges--you will scarcely believe it, Sir, but
once more it is the voice of fact that is speaking, not of fiction--
the women's colleges are not allowed to be members of the
university;[25] and the number of educated men's daughters who are
allowed to receive a university education is still strictly
limited; though both sexes contribute to the university funds.[26]
As for poverty, The Times newspaper supplies us with figures; any
ironmonger will provide us with a foot-rule; if we measure the
money available for scholarships at the men's colleges with the
money available for their sisters at the women's colleges, we shall
save ourselves the trouble of adding up; and come to the conclusion
that the colleges for the sisters of educated men are, compared
with their brothers' colleges, unbelievably and shamefully poor.[27]

Proof of that last fact comes pat to hand in the honorary
treasurer's letter, asking for money with which to rebuild her
college.  She has been asking for some time; she is still asking,
it seems.  But there is nothing, after what has been said above,
that need puzzle us, either in the fact that she is poor, or in the
fact that her college needs rebuilding.  What is puzzling, and has
become still more puzzling, in view of the facts given above, is
this:  What answer ought we to make her when she asks us to help
her to rebuild her college?  History, biography, and the daily
paper between them make it difficult either to answer her letter or
to dictate terms.  For between them they have raised many
questions.  In the first place, what reason is there to think that
a university education makes the educated against war?  Again, if
we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not
forcing her to think not about education but about war?--not how
she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she may win the
same advantages as her brothers?  Further, since the daughters of
educated men are not members of Cambridge University they have no
say in that education, therefore how can they alter that education
even if we ask them to?  And then, of course, other questions
arise--questions of a practical nature, which will easily be
understood by a busy man, an honorary treasurer, like yourself,
Sir.  You will be the first to agree that to ask people who are so
largely occupied in raising funds with which to rebuild a college
to consider the nature of education and what effect it can have
upon war is to heap another straw upon an already overburdened
back.  From an outsider, moreover, who has no right to speak, such
a request may well deserve, and perhaps receive, a reply too
forcible to be quoted.  But we have sworn that we will do all we
can to help you to prevent war by using our influence--our earned
money influence.  And education is the obvious way.  Since she is
poor, since she is asking for money, and since the giver of money
is entitled to dictate terms, let us risk it and draft a letter to
her, laying down the terms upon which she shall have our money to
help rebuild her college.  Here, then, is an attempt:

'Your letter.  Madam, has been waiting some time without an answer.
But certain doubts and questions have arisen.  May we put them to
you, ignorantly as an outsider must, but frankly as an outsider
should when asked to contribute money?  You say, then, that you are
asking for £100,000 with which to rebuild your college.  But how
can you be so foolish?  Or are you so secluded among the
nightingales and the willows, or so busy with profound questions of
caps and gowns, and which is to walk first into the Provost's
drawing-room--the Master's pug or the Mistress's pom--that you have
no time to read the daily papers?  Or are you so harassed with the
problem of drawing £100,000 gracefully from an indifferent public
that you can only think of appeals and committees, bazaars and
ices, strawberries and cream?

'Let us then inform you: we are spending three hundred millions
annually upon the army and navy; for, according to a letter that
lies cheek by jowl with your own, there is grave danger of war.
How then can you seriously ask us to provide you with money with
which to rebuild your college?  If you reply that the college was
built on the cheap, and that the college needs rebuilding, that may
be true.  But when you go on to say that the public is generous,
and that the public is still capable of providing large sums for
rebuilding colleges, let us draw your attention to a significant
passage in the Master of Trinity's memoirs.  It is this:
"Fortunately, however, soon after the beginning of this century the
University began to receive a succession of very handsome bequests
and donations, and these, aided by a liberal grant from the
Government, have put the finances of the University in such a good
position that it has been quite unnecessary to ask for any increase
in the contribution from the Colleges.  The income of the
University from all sources has increased from about £60,000 in
1900 to £212,000 in 1930.  It is not a very wild hypothesis to
suppose that this has been to a large extent due to the important
and very interesting discoveries which have been made in the
University, and Cambridge may be quoted as an example of the
practical results which come from Research for its own sake."

'Consider only that last sentence.  "...Cambridge may be quoted
as an example of the practical results which come from Research for
its own sake."  What has your college done to stimulate great
manufacturers to endow it?  Have you taken a leading part in the
invention of the implements of war?  How far have your students
succeeded in business as capitalists?  How then can you expect
"very handsome bequests and donations" to come your way?  Again,
are you a member of Cambridge University?  You are not.  How then
can you fairly ask for any say in their distribution?  You can not.
Therefore, Madam, it is plain that you must stand at the door, cap
in hand, giving parties, spending your strength and your time in
soliciting subscriptions.  That is plain.  But it is also plain
that outsiders who find you thus occupied must ask themselves, when
they receive a request for a contribution towards rebuilding your
college, Shall I send it or shan't I?  If I send it, what shall I
ask them to do with it?  Shall I ask them to rebuild the college on
the old lines?  Or shall I ask them to rebuild it, but differently?
Or shall I ask them to buy rags and petrol and Bryant & May's
matches and burn the college to the ground?

'These are the questions, Madam, that have kept your letter so long
unanswered.  They are questions of great difficulty and perhaps
they are useless questions.  But can we leave them unasked in view
of this gentleman's questions?  He is asking how can we help him to
prevent war?  He is asking us how we can help him to defend
liberty; to defend culture?  Also consider these photographs: they
are pictures of dead bodies and ruined houses.  Surely in view of
these questions and pictures you must consider very carefully
before you begin to rebuild your college what is the aim of
education, what kind of society, what kind of human being it should
seek to produce.  At any rate I will only send you a guinea with
which to rebuild your college if you can satisfy me that you will
use it to produce the kind of society, the kind of people that will
help to prevent war.

'Let us then discuss as quickly as we can the sort of education
that is needed.  Now since history and biography--the only evidence
available to an outsider--seem to prove that the old education of
the old colleges breeds neither a particular respect for liberty
nor a particular hatred of war it is clear that you must rebuild
your college differently.  It is young and poor; let it therefore
take advantage of those qualities and be founded on poverty and
youth.  Obviously, then, it must be an experimental college, an
adventurous college.  Let it be built on lines of its own.  It must
be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap,
easily combustible material which does not hoard dust and
perpetrate traditions.  Do not have chapels.[28]  Do not have
museums and libraries with chained books and first editions under
glass cases.  Let the pictures and the books be new and always
changing.  Let it be decorated afresh by each generation with their
own hands cheaply.  The work of the living is cheap; often they
will give it for the sake of being allowed to do it.  Next, what
should be taught in the new college, the poor college?  Not the
arts of dominating other people; not the arts of ruling, of
killing, of acquiring land and capital.  They require too many
overhead expenses; salaries and uniforms and ceremonies.  The poor
college must teach only the arts that can be taught cheaply and
practised by poor people; such as medicine, mathematics, music,
painting and literature.  It should teach the arts of human
intercourse; the art of understanding other people's lives and
minds, and the little arts of talk, of dress, of cookery that are
allied with them.  The aim of the new college, the cheap college,
should be not to segregate and specialize, but to combine.  It
should explore the ways in which mind and body can be made to
cooperate; discover what new combinations make good wholes in human
life.  The teachers should be drawn from the good livers as well as
from the good thinkers.  There should be no difficulty in
attracting them.  For there would be none of the barriers of wealth
and ceremony, of advertisement and competition which now make the
old and rich universities such uneasy dwelling-places--cities of
strife, cities where this is locked up and that is chained down;
where nobody can walk freely or talk freely for fear of
transgressing some chalk mark, of displeasing some dignitary.  But
if the college were poor it would have nothing to offer;
competition would be abolished.  Life would be open and easy.
People who love learning for itself would gladly come there.
Musicians, painters, writers, would teach there, because they would
learn.  What could be of greater help to a writer than to discuss
the art of writing with people who were thinking not of
examinations or degrees or of what honour or profit they could make
literature give them but of the art itself?

'And so with the other arts and artists.  They would come to the
poor college and practise their arts there because it would be a
place where society was free; not parcelled out into the miserable
distinctions of rich and poor, of clever and stupid; but where all
the different degrees and kinds of mind, body and soul merit
cooperated.  Let us then found this new college; this poor college;
in which learning is sought for itself; where advertisement is
abolished; and there are no degrees; and lectures are not given,
and sermons are not preached, and the old poisoned vanities and
parades which breed competition and jealousy...'

The letter broke off there.  It was not from lack of things to say;
the peroration indeed was only just beginning.  It was because the
face on the other side of the page--the face that a letter-writer
always sees--appeared to be fixed with a certain melancholy, upon a
passage in the book from which quotation has already been made.
'Head mistresses of schools therefore prefer a belettered staff, so
that students of Newnham and Girton, since they could not put B.A.
after their name, were at a disadvantage in obtaining appointments.'
The honorary treasurer of the Rebuilding Fund had her eyes fixed on
that.  'What is the use of thinking how a college can be different,'
she seemed to say, 'when it must be a place where students are
taught to obtain appointments?'  'Dream your dreams,' she seemed to
add, turning, rather wearily, to the table which she was arranging
for some festival, a bazaar presumably, 'but we have to face
realities.'

That then was the 'reality' on which her eyes were fixed; students
must be taught to earn their livings.  And since that reality meant
that she must rebuild her college on the same lines as the others,
it followed that the college for the daughters of educated men must
also make Research produce practical results which will induce
bequests and donations from rich men; it must encourage
competition; it must accept degrees and coloured hoods; it must
accumulate great wealth; it must exclude other people from a share
of its wealth; and, therefore, in 500 years or so, that college,
too, must ask the same question that you, Sir, are asking now:
'How in your opinion are we to prevent war?'

An undesirable result that seemed; why then subscribe a guinea to
procure it?  That question at any rate was answered.  No guinea of
earned money should go to rebuilding the college on the old plan;
just as certainly none could be spent upon building a college upon
a new plan; therefore the guinea should be earmarked 'Rags.
Petrol.  Matches'.  And this note should be attached to it.  'Take
this guinea and with it burn the college to the ground.  Set fire
to the old hypocrisies.  Let the light of the burning building
scare the nightingales and incarnadine the willows.  And let the
daughters of educated men dance round the fire and heap armful upon
armful of dead leaves upon the flames.  And let their mothers lean
from the upper windows and cry "Let it blaze!  Let it blaze!  For
we have done with this 'education'!"'

That passage, Sir, is not empty rhetoric, for it is based upon the
respectable opinion of the late headmaster of Eton, the present
Dean of Durham.[29]  Nevertheless, there is something hollow about
it, as is shown by a moment's conflict with fact.  We have said
that the only influence which the daughters of educated men can at
present exert against war is the disinterested influence that they
possess through earning their livings.  If there were no means of
training them to earn their livings, there would be an end of that
influence.  They could not obtain appointments.  If they could not
obtain appointments they would again be dependent upon their
fathers and brothers; and if they were again dependent upon their
fathers and brothers they would again be consciously and
unconsciously in favour of war.  History would seem to put that
beyond doubt.  Therefore we must send a guinea to the honorary
treasurer of the college rebuilding fund, and let her do what she
can with it.  It is useless as things are to attach conditions as
to the way in which that guinea is to be spent.

Such then is the rather lame and depressing answer to our question
whether we can ask the authorities of the colleges for the
daughters of educated men to use their influence through education
to prevent war.  It appears that we can ask them to do nothing;
they must follow the old road to the old end; our own influence as
outsiders can only be of the most indirect sort.  If we are asked
to teach, we can examine very carefully into the aim of such
teaching, and refuse to teach any art or science that encourages
war.  Further, we can pour mild scorn upon chapels, upon degrees,
and upon the value of examinations.  We can intimate that a prize
poem can still have merit in spite of the fact that it has won a
prize; and maintain that a book may still be worth reading in spite
of the fact that its author took a first class with honours in the
English tripos.  If we are asked to lecture we can refuse to
bolster up the vain and vicious system of lecturing by refusing to
lecture.[30]  And, of course, if we are offered offices and honours
for ourselves we can refuse them--how, indeed, in view of the
facts, could we possibly do otherwise?  But there is no blinking
the fact that in the present state of things the most effective way
in which we can help you through education to prevent war is to
subscribe as generously as possible to the colleges for the
daughters of educated men.  For, to repeat, if those daughters are
not going to be educated they are not going to earn their livings,
if they are not going to earn their livings, they are going once
more to be restricted to the education of the private house; and if
they are going to be restricted to the education of the private
house they are going, once more, to exert all their influence both
consciously and unconsciously in favour of war.  Of that there can
be little doubt.  Should you doubt it, should you ask proof, let us
once more consult biography.  Its testimony upon this point is so
conclusive, but so voluminous, that we must try to condense many
volumes into one story.  Here, then, is the narrative of the life
of an educated man's daughter who was dependent upon father and
brother in the private house of the nineteenth century.

The day was hot, but she could not go out.  'How many a long dull
summer's day have I passed immured indoors because there was no
room for me in the family carriage and no lady's maid who had time
to walk out with me.'  The sun set; and out she went at last,
dressed as well as could be managed upon an allowance of from £40
to £100 a year.[31]  But 'to any sort of entertainment she must be
accompanied by father or mother or by some married woman.'
Whom did she meet at those entertainments thus dressed, thus
accompanied?  Educated men--'cabinet ministers, ambassadors,
famous soldiers and the like, all splendidly dressed, wearing
decorations.'  What did they talk about?  Whatever refreshed the
minds of busy men who wanted to forget their own work--'the gossip
of the dancing world' did very well.  The days passed.  Saturday
came.  On Saturday 'M.P.s and other busy men had leisure to enjoy
society'; they came to tea and they came to dinner.  Next day was
Sunday.  On Sundays 'the great majority of us went as a matter of
course to morning church.'  The seasons changed.  It was summer.
In the summer they entertained visitors, 'mostly relatives' in the
country.  Now it was winter.  In the winter 'they studied history
and literature and music, and tried to draw and paint.  If they did
not produce anything remarkable they learnt much in the process.'
And so with some visiting the sick and teaching the poor, the years
passed.  And what was the great end and aim of these years, of that
education?  Marriage, of course.  '...it was not a question of
WHETHER we should marry, but simply of whom we should marry,' says
one of them.  It was with a view to marriage that her mind was
taught.  It was with a view to marriage that she tinkled on the
piano, but was not allowed to join an orchestra; sketched innocent
domestic scenes, but was not allowed to study from the nude; read
this book, but was not allowed to read that, charmed, and talked.
It was with a view to marriage that her body was educated; a maid
was provided for her; that the streets were shut to her; that the
fields were shut to her; that solitude was denied her--all this was
enforced upon her in order that she might preserve her body intact
for her husband.  In short, the thought of marriage influenced what
she said, what she thought, what she did.  How could it be
otherwise?  Marriage was the only profession open to her.[32]

The sight is so curious for what it shows of the educated man as
well as of his daughter that it is tempting to linger.  The
influence of the pheasant upon love alone deserves a chapter to
itself.[33]  But we are not asking now the interesting question,
what was the effect of that education upon the race?  We are asking
why did such an education make the person so educated consciously
and unconsciously in favour of war?  Because consciously, it is
obvious, she was forced to use whatever influence she possessed to
bolster up the system which provided her with maids; with
carriages; with fine clothes; with fine parties--it was by these
means that she achieved marriage.  Consciously she must use
whatever charm or beauty she possessed to flatter and cajole the
busy men, the soldiers, the lawyers, the ambassadors, the cabinet
ministers who wanted recreation after their day's work.
Consciously she must accept their views, and fall in with their
decrees because it was only so that she could wheedle them into
giving her the means to marry or marriage itself.[34]  In short, all
her conscious effort must be in favour of what Lady Lovelace called
'our splendid Empire'...'the price of which,' she added, 'is
mainly paid by women.'  And who can doubt her, or that the price
was heavy?

But her unconscious influence was even more strongly perhaps in
favour of war.  How else can we explain that amazing outburst in
August 1914, when the daughters of educated men who had been
educated thus rushed into hospitals, some still attended by their
maids, drove lorries, worked in fields and munition factories, and
used all their immense stores of charm, of sympathy, to persuade
young men that to fight was heroic, and that the wounded in battle
deserved all her care and all her praise?  The reason lies in that
same education.  So profound was her unconscious loathing for the
education of the private house with its cruelty, its poverty, its
hypocrisy, its immorality, its inanity that she would undertake any
task however menial, exercise any fascination however fatal that
enabled her to escape.  Thus consciously she desired 'our splendid
Empire'; unconsciously she desired our splendid war.

So, Sir, if you want us to help you to prevent war the conclusion
seems to be inevitable; we must help to rebuild the college which,
imperfect as it may be, is the only alternative to the education of
the private house.  We must hope that in time that education may be
altered.  That guinea must be given before we give you the guinea
that you ask for your own society.  But it is contributing to the
same cause--the prevention of war.  Guineas are rare; guineas are
valuable, but let us send one without any condition attached to the
honorary treasurer of the building fund, because by so doing we are
making a positive contribution to the prevention of war.



Two


Now that we have given one guinea towards rebuilding a college we
must consider whether there is not more that we can do to help you
to prevent war.  And it is at once obvious, if what we have said
about influence is true, that we must turn to the professions,
because if we could persuade those who can earn their livings, and
thus actually hold in their hands this new weapon, our only weapon,
the weapon of independent opinion based upon independent income, to
use that weapon against war, we should do more to help you than by
appealing to those who must teach the young to earn their livings;
or by lingering, however long, round the forbidden places and
sacred gates of the universities where they are thus taught.  This,
therefore, is a more important question than the other.

Let us then lay your letter asking for help to prevent war, before
the independent, the mature, those who are earning their livings in
the professions.  There is no need of rhetoric; hardly, one would
suppose, of argument.  'Here is a man,' one has only to say, 'whom
we all have reason to respect; he tells us that war is possible;
perhaps probable; he asks us, who can earn our livings, to help him
in any way we can to prevent war.'  That surely will be enough
without pointing to the photographs that are all this time piling
up on the table--photographs of more dead bodies, of more ruined
houses, to call forth an answer, and an answer that will give you,
Sir, the very help that you require.  But...it seems that there
is some hesitation, some doubt--not certainly that war is horrible,
that war is beastly, that war is insupportable and that war is
inhuman, as Wilfred Owen said, or that we wish to do all we can to
help you to prevent war.  Nevertheless, doubts and hesitations
there are; and the quickest way to understand them is to place
before you another letter, a letter as genuine as your own, a
letter that happens to lie beside it on the table.[1]

It is a letter from another honorary treasurer, and it is again
asking for money.  'Will you,' she writes, 'send a subscription to'
[a society to help the daughters of educated men to obtain
employment in the professions] 'in order to help us to earn our
livings?  Failing money,' she goes on, 'any gift will be
acceptable--books, fruit or cast-off clothing that can be sold in a
bazaar.'  Now that letter has so much bearing upon the doubts and
hesitations referred to above, and upon the help we can give you,
that it seems impossible either to send her a guinea or to send you
a guinea until we have considered the questions which it raises.

The first question is obviously, Why is she asking for money?  Why
is she so poor, this representative of professional women, that she
must beg for cast-off clothing for a bazaar?  That is the first
point to clear up, because if she is as poor as this letter
indicates, then the weapon of independent opinion upon which we
have been counting to help you to prevent war is not, to put it
mildly, a very powerful weapon.  On the other hand, poverty has its
advantages; for if she is poor, as poor as she pretends to be, then
we can bargain with her, as we bargained with her sister at
Cambridge, and exercise the right of potential givers to impose
terms.  Let us then question her about her financial position and
certain other facts before we give her a guinea, or lay down the
terms upon which she is to have it.  Here is the draft of such a
letter:

'Accept a thousand apologies, Madam, for keeping you waiting so
long for an answer to your letter.  The fact is, certain questions
have arisen, to which we must ask you to reply before we send you a
subscription.  In the first place you are asking for money--money
with which to pay your rent.  But how can it be, how can it
possibly be, my dear Madam, that you are so terribly poor?  The
professions have been open to the daughters of educated men for
almost 20 years.  Therefore, how can it be, that you, whom we take
to be their representative, are standing, like your sister at
Cambridge, hat in hand, pleading for money, or failing money, for
fruit, books, or cast-off clothing to sell at a bazaar?  How can it
be, we repeat?  Surely there must be some very grave defect, of
common humanity, of common justice, or of common sense.  Or can it
simply be that you are pulling a long face and telling a tall story
like the beggar at the street corner who has a stocking full of
guineas safely hoarded under her bed at home?  In any case, this
perpetual asking for money and pleading of poverty is laying you
open to very grave rebukes, not only from indolent outsiders who
dislike thinking about practical affairs almost as much as they
dislike signing cheques, but from educated men.  You are drawing
upon yourselves the censure and contempt of men of established
reputation as philosophers and novelists--of men like Mr Joad and
Mr Wells.  Not only do they deny your poverty, but they accuse you
of apathy and indifference.  Let me draw your attention to the
charges that they bring against you.  Listen, in the first place,
to what Mr C. E. M. Joad has to say of you.  He says:  "I doubt
whether at any time during the last fifty years young women have
been more politically apathetic, more socially indifferent than at
the present time."  That is how he begins.  And he goes on to say,
very rightly, that it is not his business to tell you what you
ought to do; but he adds, very kindly, that he will give you an
example of what you might do.  You might imitate your sisters in
America.  You might found "a society for the advertisement of
peace".  He gives an example.  This society explained, "I know not
with what truth, that the number of pounds spent by the world on
armaments in the current year was exactly equal to the number of
minutes (or was it seconds?) which had elapsed since the death of
Christ, who taught that war is unchristian..."  Now why should
not you, too, follow their example and create such a society in
England?  It would need money, of course; but--and this is the
point that I wish particularly to emphasize--there can be no doubt
that you have the money.  Mr Joad provides the proof.  "Before the
war money poured into the coffers of the W.S.P.U. in order that
women might win the vote which, it was hoped, would enable them to
make war a thing of the past.  The vote is won," Mr Joad continues,
"but war is very far from being a thing of the past."  That I can
corroborate myself--witness this letter from a gentleman asking for
help to prevent war, and there are certain photographs of dead
bodies and ruined houses--but let Mr Joad continue.  "Is it
unreasonable," he goes on, "to ask that contemporary women should
be prepared to give as much energy and money, to suffer as much
obloquy and insult in the cause of peace, as their mothers gave and
suffered in the cause of equality?"  And again, I cannot help but
echo, is it unreasonable to ask women to go on, from generation to
generation, suffering obloquy and insult first from their brothers
and then for their brothers?  Is it not both perfectly reasonable
and on the whole for their physical, moral and spiritual welfare?
But let us not interrupt Mr Joad.  "If it is, then the sooner they
give up the pretence of playing with public affairs and return to
private life the better.  If they cannot make a job of the House of
Commons, let them at least make something of their own houses.  If
they cannot learn to save men from the destruction which incurable
male mischievousness bids fair to bring upon them, let women at
least learn to feed them, before they destroy themselves."[2]  Let
us not pause to ask how even with a vote they can cure what Mr Joad
himself admits to be incurable, for the point is how, in the face
of that statement, you have the effrontery to ask me for a guinea
towards your rent?  According to Mr Joad you are not only extremely
rich; you are also extremely idle; and so given over to the eating
of peanuts and ice cream that you have not learnt how to cook him a
dinner before he destroys himself, let alone how to prevent that
fatal act.  But more serious charges are to follow.  Your lethargy
is such that you will not fight even to protect the freedom which
your mothers won for you.  That charge is made against you by the
most famous of living English novelists--Mr H. G. Wells.  Mr H. G.
Wells says, "There has been no perceptible woman's movement to
resist the practical obliteration of their freedom by Fascists or
Nazis."[3]  Rich, idle, greedy and lethargic as you are, how have
you the effrontery to ask me to subscribe to a society which helps
the daughters of educated men to make their livings in the
professions?  For as these gentlemen prove in spite of the vote and
the wealth which that vote must have brought with it, you have not
ended war; in spite of the vote and the power which that vote must
have brought with it, you have not resisted the practical
obliteration of your freedom by Fascists or Nazis.  What other
conclusion then can one come to but that the whole of what was
called "the woman's movement" has proved itself a failure; and the
guinea which I am sending you herewith is to be devoted not to
paying your rent but to burning your building.  And when that is
burnt, retire once more to the kitchen, Madam, and learn, if you
can, to cook the dinner which you may not share...'[4]

There, Sir, the letter stopped; for on the face at the other side
of the letter--the face that a letter-writer always sees--was an
expression, of boredom was it, or was it of fatigue?  The honorary
treasurer's glance seemed to rest upon a little scrap of paper upon
which were written two dull little facts which, since they have
some bearing upon the question we are discussing, how the daughters
of educated men who are earning their livings in the professions
can help you to prevent war, may be copied here.  The first fact
was that the income of the W.S.P.U. upon which Mr Joad has based
his estimate of their wealth was (in the year 1912 at the height of
their activity) £42,000.[5]  The second fact was that:  'To earn
£250 a year is quite an achievement even for a highly qualified
woman with years of experience.'[6]  The date of that statement is
1934.

Both facts are interesting; and since both have a direct bearing
upon the question before us, let us examine them.  To take the
first fact first--that is interesting because it shows that one of
the greatest political changes of our times was accomplished upon
the incredibly minute income of £42,000 a year.  'Incredibly
minute' is, of course, a comparative term; it is incredibly minute,
that is to say, compared with the income which the Conservative
party, or the Liberal party--the parties to which the educated
woman's brother belonged--had at their disposal for their political
causes.  It is considerably less than the income which the Labour
party--the party to which the working woman's brother belongs--has
at their disposal.[7]  It is incredibly minute compared with the
sums that a society like the Society for the Abolition of Slavery
for example had at its disposal for the abolition of that slavery.
It is incredibly minute compared with the sums which the educated
man spends annually, not upon political causes, but upon sports and
pleasure.  But our amazement, whether at the poverty of educated
men's daughters or at their economy, is a decidedly unpleasant
emotion in this case, for it forces us to suspect that the honorary
treasurer is telling the sober truth; she is poor; and it forces us
to ask once more how, if £42,000 was all that the daughters of
educated men could collect after many years of indefatigable labour
for their own cause, they can help you to win yours?  How much
peace will £42,000 a year buy at the present moment when we are
spending £300,000,000 annually upon arms?

But the second fact is the more startling and the more depressing
of the two--the fact that now, almost 20 years, that is, after they
have been admitted to the money-making professions 'to earn £250 a
year is quite an achievement even for a highly qualified woman with
years of experience.'  Indeed, that fact, if it is a fact, is so
startling and has so much bearing upon the question before us that
we must pause for a moment to examine it.  It is so important that
it must be examined, moreover, by the white light of facts, not by
the coloured light of biography.  Let us have recourse then to some
impersonal and impartial authority who has no more axe to grind or
dinner to cook than Cleopatra's Needle--Whitaker's Almanack, for
example.

Whitaker, needless to say, is not only one of the most
dispassionate of authors, but one of the most methodical.  There,
in his Almanack he has collected all the facts about all, or almost
all, of the professions that have been opened to the daughters of
educated men.  In a section called 'Government and Public Offices'
he provides us with a plain statement of whom the Government
employs professionally, and of what the Government pays those whom
it employs.  Since Whitaker adopts the alphabetical system, let us
follow his lead and examine the first six letters of the alphabet.
Under A there are the Admiralty, the Air Ministry, and Ministry of
Agriculture.  Under B there is the British Broadcasting
Corporation; under C the Colonial Office and the Charity
Commissioners; under D the Dominions Office and Development
Commission; under E there are the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and
the Board of Education; and so we come to the sixth letter F under
which we find the Ministry of Fisheries, the Foreign Office, the
Friendly Societies and the Fine Arts.  These then are some of the
professions which are now, as we are frequently reminded, open to
both men and women equally.  And the salaries paid to those
employed in them come out of public money which is supplied by both
sexes equally.  And the income tax which supplies those salaries
(among other things) now stands at about five shillings in the
pound.  We have all, therefore, an interest in asking how that
money is spent, and upon whom.  Let us look at the salary list of
the Board of Education, since that is the class to which we both,
Sir, though in very different degrees, have the honour to belong.
The President, Whitaker says, of the Board of Education, gets
£2,000; his principal Private Secretary gets from £847 to £1,058;
his Assistant Private Secretary gets from £277 to £634.  Then there
is the Permanent Secretary of the Board of Education.  He gets
£3,000; his Private Secretary gets from £277 to £634.  The
Parliamentary Secretary gets £1,200; his Private Secretary gets
from £277 to £634.  The Deputy Secretary gets £2,200.  The
Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department gets £1,650.  And then
there are Principal Assistant Secretaries and Assistant
Secretaries, there are Directors of Establishments, Accountants-
General, principal Finance Officers, Finance Officers, Legal
Advisers, Assistant Legal Advisers--all these ladies and gentlemen,
the impeccable and impartial Whitaker informs us, get incomes which
run into four figures or over.  Now an income which is over or
about a thousand a year is a nice round sum when it is paid yearly
and paid punctually; but when we consider that the work is a whole-
time job and a skilled job we shall not grudge these ladies and
gentlemen their salaries, even though our income tax does stand at
five shillings in the pound, and our incomes are by no means paid
punctually or paid annually.  Men and women who spend every day and
all day in an office from the age of about 23 to the age of 60 or
so deserve every penny they get.  Only, the reflection will intrude
itself, if these ladies are drawing £1,000, £2,000 and £3,000 a
year, not only in the Board of Education, but in all the other
boards and offices which are now open to them, from the Admiralty
at the beginning of the alphabet to the Board of Works at the end,
the statement that '£250 is quite an achievement, even for a highly
qualified woman with years of experience' must be, to put it
plainly, an unmitigated lie.  Why, we have only to walk down
Whitehall; consider how many boards and offices are housed there;
reflect that each is staffed and officered by a flock of
secretaries and under-secretaries so many and so nicely graded that
their very names make our heads spin; and remember that each has
his or her own sufficient salary, to exclaim that the statement is
impossible, inexplicable.  How can we explain it?  Only by putting
on a stronger pair of glasses.  Let us read down the list, further
and further and further down.  At last we come to a name to which
the prefix 'Miss' is attached.  Can it be that all the names on top
of hers, all the names to which the big salaries are attached, are
the names of gentlemen?  It seems so.  So then it is not the
salaries that are lacking; it is the daughters of educated men.

Now three good reasons for this curious deficiency or disparity lie
upon the surface.  Dr Robson supplies us with the first--'The
Administrative Class, which occupies all the controlling positions
in the Home Civil Service, consists to an overwhelming extent of
the fortunate few who can manage to get to Oxford and Cambridge;
and the entrance examination has always been expressly designed for
that purpose.'[8]  The fortunate few in our class, the daughters of
educated men class, are very, very few.  Oxford and Cambridge, as
we have seen, strictly limit the number of educated men's daughters
who are allowed to receive a university education.  Secondly, many
more daughters stay at home to look after old mothers than sons
stay at home to look after old fathers.  The private house, we must
remember, is still a going concern.  Hence fewer daughters than
sons enter for the Civil Service Examination.  In the third place,
we may fairly assume that 60 years of examination passing are not
so effective as 500.  The Civil Service Examination is a stiff one;
we may reasonably expect more sons to pass it than daughters.  We
have nevertheless to explain the curious fact that though a certain
number of daughters enter for the examination and pass the
examination those to whose names the word 'Miss' is attached do not
seem to enter the four-figure zone.  The sex distinction seems,
according to Whitaker, possessed of a curious leaden quality,
liable to keep any name to which it is fastened circling in the
lower spheres.  Plainly the reason for this may lie not upon the
surface, but within.  It may be, to speak bluntly, that the
daughters are in themselves deficient; that they have proved
themselves untrustworthy; unsatisfactory; so lacking in the
necessary ability that it is to the public interest to keep them to
the lower grades where, if they are paid less, they have less
chance of impeding the transaction of public business.  This
solution would be easy but, unfortunately, it is denied to us.  It
is denied to us by the Prime Minister himself.  Women in the Civil
Services are not untrustworthy, Mr Baldwin* informed us the other
day.  'Many of them,' he said, 'are in positions in the course of
their daily work to amass secret information.  Secret information
has a way of leaking very often, as we politicians know to our
cost.  I have never known a case of such a leakage being due to a
woman, and I have known cases of leakage coming from men who should
have known a great deal better.'  So they are not so loose-lipped
and fond of gossip as the tradition would have it?  A useful
contribution in its way to psychology and a hint to novelists; but
still there may be other objections to women's employment as Civil
Servants.


* Since these words were written Mr Baldwin has ceased to be Prime
Minister and become an Earl.


Intellectually, they may not be so able as their brothers.  But
here again the Prime Minister will not help us out.  'He was not
prepared to say that any conclusion had been formed--or was even
necessary--whether women were as good as, or better than, men, but
he believed that women had worked in the Civil Service to their own
content, and certainly to the complete satisfaction of everybody
who had anything to do with them.'  Finally, as if to cap what must
necessarily be an inconclusive statement by expressing a personal
opinion which might rightly be more positive he said, 'I should
like to pay my personal tribute to the industry, capacity, ability
and loyalty of the women I have come across in Civil Service
positions.'  And he went on to express the hope that business men
would make more use of those very valuable qualities.[9]

Now if anyone is in a position to know the facts it is the Prime
Minister; and if anyone is able to speak the truth about them it is
the same gentleman.  Yet Mr Baldwin says one thing; Mr Whitaker
says another.  If Mr Baldwin is well informed, so is Mr Whitaker.
Nevertheless, they contradict each other.  The issue is joined; Mr
Baldwin says that women are first-class civil servants; Mr Whitaker
says that they are third-class civil servants.  It is, in short, a
case of Baldwin v. Whitaker, and since it is a very important case,
for upon it depends the answer to many questions which puzzle us,
not only about the poverty of educated men's daughters but about
the psychology of educated men's sons, let us try the case of the
Prime Minister v. the Almanack.

For such a trial you, Sir, have definite qualifications; as a
barrister you have first-hand knowledge of one profession, and as
an educated man second-hand knowledge of many more.  And if it is
true that the daughters of educated men who are of Mary Kingsley's
persuasion have no direct knowledge, still through fathers and
uncles, cousins and brothers they may claim some indirect knowledge
of professional life--it is a photograph that they have often
looked upon--and this indirect knowledge they can improve, if they
have a mind, by peeping through doors, taking notes, and asking
questions discreetly.  If, then, we pool our first-hand,
secondhand, direct and indirect knowledge of the professions with a
view to trying the important case of Baldwin v. Whitaker we shall
agree at the outset that professions are very queer things.  It by
no means follows that a clever man gets to the top or that a stupid
man stays at the bottom.  This rising and falling is by no means a
cut-and-dried clear-cut rational process, we shall both agree.
After all, as we both have reason to know, Judges are fathers; and
Permanent Secretaries have sons.  Judges require marshals;
Permanent Secretaries, private secretaries.  What is more natural
than that a nephew should be a marshal or the son of an old school
friend a private secretary?  To have such perquisites in their gift
is as much the due of the public servant as a cigar now and then or
a cast-off dress here and there are perquisites of the private
servant.  But the giving of such perquisites, the exercise of such
influence, queers the professions.  Success is easier for some,
harder for others, however equal the brain power may be so that
some rise unexpectedly; some fall unexpectedly; some remain
strangely stationary; with the result that the professions are
queered.  Often indeed it is the public advantage that they should
be queered.  Since nobody, from the Master of Trinity downwards
(bating, presumably, a few Head Mistresses), believes in the
infallibility of examiners, a certain degree of elasticity is to
the public advantage; since the impersonal is fallible, it is well
that it should be supplemented by the personal.  Happily for us
all, therefore, we may conclude, a board is not made literally of
oak, nor a division of iron.  Both boards and divisions transmit
human sympathies, and reflect human antipathies with the result
that the imperfections of the examination system are rectified; the
public interest is served; and the ties of blood and friendship are
recognized.  Thus it is quite possible that the name 'Miss'
transmits through the board or division some vibration which is not
registered in the examination room.  'Miss' transmits sex; and sex
may carry with it an aroma.  'Miss' may carry with it the swish of
petticoats, the savour of scent or other odour perceptible to the
nose on the further side of the partition and obnoxious to it.
What charms and consoles in the private house may distract and
exacerbate in the public office.  The Archbishops' Commission
assures us that this is so in the pulpit.[10]  Whitehall may be
equally susceptible.  At any rate since Miss is a woman, Miss was
not educated at Eton or Christ Church.  Since Miss is a woman, Miss
is not a son or a nephew.  We are hazarding our way among
imponderables.  We can scarcely proceed too much on tiptoe.  We are
trying, remember, to discover what flavour attaches itself to sex
in a public office; we are sniffing most delicately not facts but
savours.  And therefore it would be well not to depend on our own
private noses, but to call in evidence from outside.  Let us turn
to the public press and see if we can discover from the opinions
aired there any hint that will guide us in our attempt to decide
the delicate and difficult question as to the aroma, the atmosphere
that surrounds the word 'Miss' in Whitehall.  We will consult the
newspapers.


First:


I think your correspondent...correctly sums up this discussion
in the observation that woman has too much liberty.  It is probable
that this so-called liberty came with the war, when women assumed
responsibilities so far unknown to them.  They did splendid service
during those days.  Unfortunately, they were praised and petted out
of all proportion to the value of their performances.[11]


That does very well for a beginning.  But let us proceed:


I am of the opinion that a considerable amount of the distress
which is prevalent in this section of the community [the clerical]
could be relieved by the policy of employing men instead of women,
wherever possible.  There are today in Government offices, post
offices, insurance companies, banks and other offices, thousands of
women doing work which men could do.  At the same time there are
thousands of qualified men, young and middle-aged, who cannot get a
job of any sort.  There is a large demand for woman labour in the
domestic arts, and in the process of regrading a large number of
women who have drifted into clerical service would become available
for domestic service.[12]


The odour thickens, you will agree.

Then once more:


I am certain I voice the opinion of thousands of young men when I
say that if men were doing the work that thousands of young women
are now doing the men would be able to keep those same women in
decent homes.  Homes are the real places of the women who are now
compelling men to be idle.  It is time the Government insisted upon
employers giving work to more men, thus enabling them to marry the
women they cannot now approach.[13]


There!  There can be no doubt of the odour now.  The cat is out of
the bag; and it is a Tom.

After considering the evidence contained in those three quotations,
you will agree that there is good reason to think that the word
'Miss', however delicious its scent in the private house, has a
certain odour attached to it in Whitehall which is disagreeable to
the noses on the other side of the partition; and that it is likely
that a name to which 'Miss' is attached will, because of this
odour, circle in the lower spheres where the salaries are small
rather than mount to the higher spheres where the salaries are
substantial.  As for 'Mrs', it is a contaminated word; an obscene
word.  The less said about that word the better.  Such is the smell
of it, so rank does it stink in the nostrils of Whitehall, that
Whitehall excludes it entirely.  In Whitehall as in heaven, there
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.[14]

Odour then--or shall we call it 'atmosphere'?--is a very important
element in professional life; in spite of the fact that like other
important elements it is impalpable.  It can escape the noses of
examiners in examination rooms, yet penetrate boards and divisions
and affect the senses of those within.  Its bearing upon the case
before us is undeniable.  For it allows us to decide in the case of
Baldwin v. Whitaker that both the Prime Minister and the Almanack
are telling the truth.  It is true that women civil servants
deserve to be paid as much as men; but it is also true that they
are not paid as much as men.  The discrepancy is due to atmosphere.

Atmosphere plainly is a very mighty power.  Atmosphere not only
changes the sizes and shapes of things; it affects solid bodies,
like salaries, which might have been thought impervious to
atmosphere.  An epic poem might be written about atmosphere, or a
novel in ten or fifteen volumes.  But since this is only a letter,
and you are pressed for time, let us confine ourselves to the plain
statement that atmosphere is one of the most powerful, partly
because it is one of the most impalpable, of the enemies with which
the daughters of educated men have to fight.  If you think that
statement exaggerated, look once more at the samples of atmosphere
contained in those three quotations.  We shall find there not only
the reason why the pay of the professional woman is still so small,
but something more dangerous, something which, if it spreads, may
poison both sexes equally.  There, in those quotations, is the egg
of the very same worm that we know under other names in other
countries.  There we have in embryo the creature, Dictator as we
call him when he is Italian or German, who believes that he has the
right whether given by God, Nature, sex or race is immaterial, to
dictate to other human beings how they shall live; what they shall
do.  Let us quote again:  'Homes are the real places of the women
who are now compelling men to be idle.  It is time the Government
insisted upon employers giving work to more men, thus enabling them
to marry the women they cannot now approach.'  Place beside it
another quotation:  'There are two worlds in the life of the
nation, the world of men and the world of women.  Nature has done
well to entrust the man with the care of his family and the nation.
The woman's world is her family, her husband, her children, and her
home.'  One is written in English, the other in German.  But where
is the difference?  Are they not both saying the same thing?  Are
they not both the voices of Dictators, whether they speak English
or German, and are we not all agreed that the dictator when we meet
him abroad is a very dangerous as well as a very ugly animal?  And
he is here among us, raising his ugly head, spitting his poison,
small still, curled up like a caterpillar on a leaf, but in the
heart of England.  Is it not from this egg, to quote Mr Wells
again, that 'the practical obliteration of [our] freedom by
Fascists or Nazis' will spring?  And is not the woman who has to
breathe that poison and to fight that insect, secretly and without
arms, in her office, fighting the Fascist or the Nazi as surely as
those who fight him with arms in the limelight of publicity?  And
must not that fight wear down her strength and exhaust her spirit?
Should we not help her to crush him in our own country before we
ask her to help us to crush him abroad?  And what right have we,
Sir, to trumpet our ideals of freedom and justice to other
countries when we can shake out from our most respectable
newspapers any day of the week eggs like these?

Here, rightly, you will check what has all the symptoms of becoming
a peroration by pointing out that though the opinions expressed in
these letters are not altogether agreeable to our national self-
esteem they are the natural expression of fear and a jealousy which
we must understand before we condemn them.  It is true, you will
say, that these gentlemen seem a little unduly concerned with their
own salaries and their own security, but that is comprehensible,
given the traditions of their sex, and even compatible with a
genuine love of freedom and a genuine hatred of dictatorship.  For
these gentlemen are, or wish to become, husbands and fathers, and
in that case the support of the family will depend upon them.  In
other words, sir, I take you to mean that the world as it is at
present is divided into two services; one the public and the other
the private.  In one world the sons of educated men work as civil
servants, judges, soldiers and are paid for that work; in the other
world, the daughters of educated men work as wives, mothers,
daughters--but are they not paid for that work?  Is the work of a
mother, of a wife, of a daughter, worth nothing to the nation in
solid cash?  That fact, if it be a fact, is so astonishing that we
must confirm it by appealing once more to the impeccable Whitaker.
Let us turn to his pages again.  We may turn them, and turn them
again.  It seems incredible, yet it seems undeniable.  Among all
those offices there is no such office as a mother's; among all
those salaries there is no such salary as a mother's.  The work of
an archbishop is worth £15,000 a year to the State; the work of a
judge is worth £5,000 a year; the work of a permanent secretary is
worth £3,000 a year; the work of an army captain, of a sea captain,
of a sergeant of dragoons, of a policeman, of a postman--all these
works are worth paying out of the taxes, but wives and mothers and
daughters who work all day and every day, without whose work the
State would collapse and fall to pieces, without whose work your
sons, sir, would cease to exist, are paid nothing whatever.  Can it
be possible?  Or have we convicted Whitaker, the impeccable, of
errata?

Ah, you will interpose, here is another misunderstanding.  Husband
and wife are not only one flesh; they are also one purse.  The
wife's salary is half the husband's income.  The man is paid more
than the woman for that very reason--because he has a wife to
support.  The bachelor then is paid at the same rate as the
unmarried woman?  It appears not--another queer effect of
atmosphere, no doubt; but let it pass.  Your statement that the
wife's salary is half the husband's income seems to be an equitable
arrangement, and no doubt, since it is equitable, it is confirmed
by law.  Your reply that the law leaves these private matters to be
decided privately is less satisfactory, for it means that the
wife's half-share of the common income is not paid legally into her
hands, but into her husband's.  But still a spiritual right may be
as binding as a legal right; and if the wife of an educated man has
a spiritual right to half her husband's income, then we may assume
that the wife of an educated man has as much money to spend, once
the common household bills are met, upon any cause that appeals to
her as her husband.  Now her husband, witness Whitaker, witness the
wills in the daily paper, is often not merely well paid by his
profession, but is master of a very considerable capital sum.
Therefore this lady who asserts that £250 a year is all that a
woman can earn today in the professions is evading the question;
for the profession of marriage in the educated class is a highly
paid one, since she has a right, a spiritual right, to half her
husband's salary.  The puzzle deepens; the mystery thickens.  For
if the wives of rich men are themselves rich women, how does it
come about that the income of the W.S.P.U. was only £42,000 a year;
how does it come about that the honorary treasurer of the college
rebuilding fund is still asking for £100,000; how does it come
about that the treasurer of a society for helping professional
women to obtain employment is asking not merely for money to pay
her rent but will be grateful for books, fruit or cast-off
clothing?  It stands to reason that if the wife has a spiritual
right to half her husband's income because her own work as his wife
is unpaid, then she must have as much money to spend upon such
causes as appeal to her as he has.  And since those causes are
standing hat in hand a-begging we are forced to conclude that they
are causes that do not take the fancy of the educated man's wife.
The charge against her is a very serious one.  For consider--there
is the money--that surplus fund that can be devoted to education,
to pleasure, to philanthropy when the household dues are met; she
can spend her share as freely as her husband can spend his.  She
can spend it upon whatever causes she likes; and yet she will not
spend it upon the causes that are dear to her own sex.  There they
are, hat in hand a-begging.  That is a terrible charge to bring
against her.

But let us pause for a moment before we decide that charge against
her.  Let us ask what are the causes, the pleasures, the
philanthropies upon which the educated man's wife does in fact
spend her share of the common surplus fund.  And here we are
confronted with facts which, whether we like them or not, we must
face.  The fact is that the tastes of the married woman in our
class are markedly virile.  She spends vast sums annually upon
party funds; upon sport; upon grouse moors; upon cricket and
football.  She lavishes money upon clubs--Brooks', White's, the
Travellers', the Reform, the Athenaeum--to mention only the most
prominent.  Her expenditure upon these causes, pleasures and
philanthropies must run into many millions every year.  And yet by
far the greater part of this sum is spent upon pleasures which she
does not share.  She lays out thousands and thousands of pounds
upon clubs to which her own sex is not admitted;[15] upon
racecourses where she may not ride; upon colleges from which her
own sex is excluded.  She pays a huge bill annually for wine which
she does not drink and for cigars which she does not smoke.  In
short, there are only two conclusions to which we can come about
the educated man's wife--the first is that she is the most
altruistic of beings who prefers to spend her share of the common
fund upon his pleasures and causes; the second, and more probable,
if less creditable, is not that she is the most altruistic of
beings, but that her spiritual right to a share of half her
husband's income peters out in practice to an actual right to
board, lodging and a small annual allowance for pocket money and
dress.  Either of these conclusions is possible; the evidence of
public institutions and subscription lists puts any other out of
the question.  For consider how nobly the educated man supports his
old school, his old college; how splendidly he subscribes to party
funds; how munificently he contributes to all those institutions
and sports by which he and his sons educate their minds and develop
their bodies--the daily papers bear daily witness to those
indisputable facts.  But the absence of her name from subscription
lists, and the poverty of the institutions which educate her mind
and her body seem to prove that there is something in the
atmosphere of the private house which deflects the wife's spiritual
share of the common income impalpably but irresistibly towards
those causes which her husband approves and those pleasures which
he enjoys.  Whether creditable or discreditable, that is the fact.
And that is the reason why those other causes stand a-begging.

With Whitaker's facts and the facts of the subscription lists
before us, we seem to have arrived at three facts which are
indisputable and must have great influence upon our inquiry how we
can help you to prevent war.  The first is that the daughters of
educated men are paid very little from the public funds for their
public services; the second is that they are paid nothing at all
from the public funds for their private services; and the third is
that their share of the husband's income is not a flesh-and-blood
share but a spiritual or nominal share, which means that when both
are clothed and fed the surplus fund that can be devoted to causes,
pleasures or philanthropies gravitates mysteriously but
indisputably towards those causes, pleasures and philanthropies
which the husband enjoys, and of which the husband approves.  It
seems that the person to whom the salary is actually paid is the
person who has the actual right to decide how that salary shall be
spent.

These facts then bring us back in a chastened mood and with rather
altered views to our starting point.  For we were going, you may
remember, to lay your appeal for help in the prevention of war
before the women who earn their livings in the professions.  It is
to them, we said, to whom we must appeal, because it is they who
have our new weapon, the influence of an independent opinion based
upon an independent income, in their possession.  But the facts
once more are depressing.  They make it clear in the first place
that we must rule out, as possible helpers, that large group to
whom marriage is a profession, because it is an unpaid profession,
and because the spiritual share of half the husband's salary is
not, facts seem to show, an actual share.  Therefore, her
disinterested influence founded upon an independent income is nil.
If he is in favour of force, she too will be in favour of force.
In the second place, facts seem to prove that the statement 'To
earn £250 a year is quite an achievement even for a highly
qualified woman with years of experience' is not an unmitigated lie
but a highly probable truth.  Therefore, the influence which the
daughters of educated men have at present from their money-earning
power cannot be rated very highly.  Yet since it has become more
than ever obvious that it is to them that we must look for help,
for they alone can help us, it is to them that we must appeal.
This conclusion then brings us back to the letter from which we
quoted above--the honorary treasurer's letter, the letter asking
for a subscription to the society for helping the daughters of
educated men to obtain employment in the professions.  You will
agree, sir, that we have strong selfish motives for helping her--
there can be no doubt about that.  For to help women to earn their
livings in the professions is to help them to possess that weapon
of independent opinion which is still their most powerful weapon.
It is to help them to have a mind of their own and a will of their
own with which to help you to prevent war.  But...--here again,
in those dots, doubts and hesitations assert themselves--can we,
considering the facts given above, send her our guinea without
laying down very stringent terms as to how that guinea shall be
spent?

For the facts which we have discovered in checking her statement as
to her financial position have raised questions which make us
wonder whether we are wise to encourage people to enter the
professions if we wish to prevent war.  You will remember that we
are using our psychological insight (for that is our only
qualification) to decide what kind of qualities in human nature are
likely to lead to war.  And the facts disclosed above are of a kind
to make us ask, before we write our cheque, whether if we encourage
the daughters of educated men to enter the professions we shall not
be encouraging the very qualities that we wish to prevent?  Shall
we not be doing our guinea's worth to ensure that in two or three
centuries not only the educated men in the professions but the
educated women in the professions will be asking--oh, of whom? as
the poet says--the very question that you are asking us now:  How
can we prevent war?  If we encourage the daughters to enter the
professions without making any conditions as to the way in which
the professions are to be practised shall we not be doing our best
to stereotype the old tune which human nature, like a gramophone
whose needle has stuck, is now grinding out with such disastrous
unanimity?  'Here we go round the mulberry tree, the mulberry tree,
the mulberry tree.  Give it all to me, give it all to me, all to
me.  Three hundred millions spent upon war.'  With that song, or
something like it, ringing in our ears we cannot send our guinea to
the honorary treasurer without warning her that she shall only have
it on condition that she shall swear that the professions in future
shall be practised so that they shall lead to a different song and
a different conclusion.  She shall only have it if she can satisfy
us that our guinea shall be spent in the cause of peace.  It is
difficult to formulate such conditions; in our present psychological
ignorance perhaps impossible.  But the matter is so serious, war is
so insupportable, so horrible, so inhuman, that an attempt must be
made.  Here then is another letter to the same lady.

'Your letter, Madam, has waited a long time for an answer, but we
have been examining into certain charges made against you and
making certain inquiries.  We have acquitted you, Madam, you will
be relieved to learn, of telling lies.  It would seem to be true
that you are poor.  We have acquitted you further, of idleness,
apathy and greed.  The number of causes that you are championing,
however secretly and ineffectively, is in your favour.  If you
prefer ice creams and peanuts to roast beef and beer the reason
would seem to be economic rather than gustatory.  It would seem
probable that you have not much money to spend upon food or much
leisure to spend upon eating it in view of the circulars and
leaflets you issue, the meetings you arrange, the bazaars you
organize.  Indeed, you would appear to be working, without a salary
too, rather longer hours than the Home Office would approve.  But
though we are willing to deplore your poverty and to commend your
industry we are not going to send you a guinea to help you to help
women to enter the professions unless you can assure us that they
will practise those professions in such a way as to prevent war.
That, you will say, is a vague statement, an impossible condition.
Still, since guineas are rare and guineas are valuable you will
listen to the terms we wish to impose if, you intimate, they can be
stated briefly.  Well then, Madam, since you are pressed for time,
what with the Pensions Bill, what with shepherding the Peers into
the House of Lords so that they may vote on it as instructed by
you, what with reading Hansard and the newspapers--though that
should not take much time; you will find no mention of your
activities there;[16] a conspiracy of silence seems to be the rule;
what with plotting still for equal pay for equal work in the Civil
Service, while at the same time you are arranging hares and old
coffee-pots so as to seduce people into paying more for them than
they are strictly worth at a bazaar--since, in one word, it is
obvious that you are busy, let us be quick; make a rapid survey;
discuss a few passages in the books in your library; in the papers
on your table, and then see if we can make the statement less
vague, the conditions more clear.

'Let us then begin by looking at the outside of things, at the
general aspect.  Things have outsides let us remember as well as
insides.  Close at hand is a bridge over the Thames, an admirable
vantage ground for such a survey.  The river flows beneath; barges
pass, laden with timber, bursting with corn; there on one side are
the domes and spires of the city; on the other, Westminster and the
Houses of Parliament.  It is a place to stand on by the hour,
dreaming.  But not now.  Now we are pressed for time.  Now we are
here to consider facts; now we must fix our eyes upon the
procession--the procession of the sons of educated men.

'There they go, our brothers who have been educated at public
schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in and out
of those doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, teaching,
administering justice, practising medicine, transacting business,
making money.  It is a solemn sight always--a procession, like a
caravanserai crossing a desert.  Great-grandfathers, grandfathers,
fathers, uncles--they all went that way, wearing their gowns,
wearing their wigs, some with ribbons across their breasts, others
without.  One was a bishop.  Another a judge.  One was an admiral.
Another a general.  One was a professor.  Another a doctor.  And
some left the procession and were last heard of doing nothing in
Tasmania; were seen, rather shabbily dressed, selling newspapers at
Charing Cross.  But most of them kept in step, walked according to
rule, and by hook or by crook made enough to keep the family house,
somewhere, roughly speaking, in the West End, supplied with beef
and mutton for all, and with education for Arthur.  It is a solemn
sight, this procession, a sight that has often caused us, you may
remember, looking at it sidelong from an upper window, to ask
ourselves certain questions.  But now, for the past twenty years or
so, it is no longer a sight merely, a photograph, or fresco
scrawled upon the walls of time, at which we can look with merely
an aesthetic appreciation.  For there, trapesing along at the tail
end of the procession, we go ourselves.  And that makes a
difference.  We who have looked so long at the pageant in books, or
from a curtained window watched educated men leaving the house at
about nine-thirty to go to an office, returning to the house at
about six-thirty from an office, need look passively no longer.  We
too can leave the house, can mount those steps, pass in and out of
those doors, wear wigs and gowns, make money, administer justice.
Think--one of these days, you may wear a judge's wig on your head,
an ermine cape on your shoulders; sit under the lion and the
unicorn; draw a salary of five thousand a year with a pension on
retiring.  We who now agitate these humble pens may in another
century or two speak from a pulpit.  Nobody will dare contradict us
then; we shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit--a solemn
thought, is it not?  Who can say whether, as time goes on, we may
not dress in military uniform, with gold lace on our breasts,
swords at our sides, and something like the old family coal-scuttle
on our heads, save that that venerable object was never decorated
with plumes of white horsehair.  You laugh--indeed the shadow of
the private house still makes those dresses look a little queer.
We have worn private clothes so long--the veil that St Paul
recommended.  But we have not come here to laugh, or to talk of
fashions--men's and women's.  We are here, on the bridge, to ask
ourselves certain questions.  And they are very important
questions; and we have very little time in which to answer them.
The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that
procession during this moment of transition are so important that
they may well change the lives of all men and women for ever.  For
we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that
procession, or don't we?  On what terms shall we join that
procession?  Above all, where is it leading us, the procession of
educated men?  The moment is short; it may last five years; ten
years, or perhaps only a matter of a few months longer.  But the
questions must be answered; and they are so important that if all
the daughters of educated men did nothing, from morning to night,
but consider that procession from every angle, if they did nothing
but ponder it and analyse it, and think about it and read about it
and pool their thinking and reading, and what they see and what
they guess, their time would be better spent than in any other
activity now open to them.  But, you will object, you have no time
to think; you have your battles to fight, your rent to pay, your
bazaars to organize.  That excuse shall not serve you, Madam.  As
you know from your own experience, and there are facts that prove
it, the daughters of educated men have always done their thinking
from hand to mouth; not under green lamps at study tables in the
cloisters of secluded colleges.  They have thought while they
stirred the pot, while they rocked the cradle.  It was thus that
they won us the right to our brand-new sixpence.  It falls to us
now to go on thinking; how are we to spend that sixpence?  Think we
must.  Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing
in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor's Shows; let us
think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of
the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms
and marriages and funerals.  Let us never cease from thinking--what
is this "civilization" in which we find ourselves?  What are these
ceremonies and why should we take part in them?  What are these
professions and why should we make money out of them?  Where in
short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men?

'But you are busy; let us return to facts.  Come indoors then, and
open the books on your library shelves.  For you have a library,
and a good one.  A working library, a living library; a library
where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library
where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the
livers.  There are the poems, here the biographies.  And what light
do they throw upon the professions, these biographies?  How far do
they encourage us to think that if we help the daughters to become
professional women we shall discourage war?  The answer to that
question is scattered all about these volumes; and is legible to
anyone who can read plain English.  And the answer, one must admit,
is extremely queer.  For almost every biography we read of
professional men in the nineteenth century, to limit ourselves to
that not distant and fully documented age, is largely concerned
with war.  They were great fighters, it seems, the professional men
in the age of Queen Victoria.  There was the battle of Westminster.
There was the battle of the universities.  There was the battle of
Whitehall.  There was the battle of Harley Street.  There was the
battle of the Royal Academy.  Some of these battles, as you can
testify, are still in progress.  In fact the only profession which
does not seem to have fought a fierce battle during the nineteenth
century is the profession of literature.  All the other
professions, according to the testimony of biography, seem to be as
bloodthirsty as the profession of arms itself.  It is true that the
combatants did not inflict flesh wounds;[17] chivalry forbade; but
you will agree that a battle that wastes time is as deadly as a
battle that wastes blood.  You will agree that a battle that costs
money is as deadly as a battle that costs a leg or an arm.  You
will agree that a battle that forces youth to spend its strength
haggling in committee rooms, soliciting favours, assuming a mask of
reverence to cloak its ridicule, inflicts wounds upon the human
spirit which no surgery can heal.  Even the battle of equal pay for
equal work is not without its timeshed, its spiritshed, as you
yourself, were you not unaccountably reticent on certain matters,
might agree.  Now the books in your library record so many of these
battles that it is impossible to go into them all; but as they all
seem to have been fought on much the same plan, and by the same
combatants, that is by professional men v. their sisters and
daughters, let us, since time presses, glance at one of these
campaigns only and examine the battle of Harley Street, in order
that we may understand what effect the professions have upon those
who practise them.

'The campaign was opened in the year 1869 under the leadership of
Sophia Jex-Blake.  Her case is so typical an instance of the great
Victorian fight between the victims of the patriarchal system and
the patriarchs, of the daughters against the fathers, that it
deserves a moment's examination.  Sophia's father was an admirable
specimen of the Victorian educated man, kindly, cultivated and
well-to-do.  He was a proctor of Doctors' Commons.  He could afford
to keep six servants, horses and carriages, and could provide his
daughter not only with food and lodging but with "handsome
furniture" and "a cosy fire" in her bedroom.  For salary, "for
dress and private money", he gave her £40 a year.  For some reason
she found this sum insufficient.  In 1859, in view of the fact that
she had only nine shillings and ninepence left to last her till
next quarter, she wished to earn money herself.  And she was
offered a tutorship with the pay of five shillings an hour.  She
told her father of the offer.  He replied, "Dearest, I have only
this moment heard that you contemplate being PAID for the
tutorship.  It would be quite beneath you, darling, and I CANNOT
CONSENT TO IT," She argued:  "Why should I not take it?  You as a
man did your work and received your payment, and no one thought it
any degradation, but a fair exchange... Tom is doing on a large
scale what I am doing on a small one."  He replied:  "The cases you
cite, darling, are not to the point... T. W...feels bound
as a MAN...to support his wife and family, and his position is
a high one, which can only be filled by a first-class man of
character, and yielding him nearer two than one thousand a year...
How entirely different is my darling's case!  You want for
nothing, and know that (humanly speaking) you will want for
nothing.  If you married tomorrow--to my liking--and I don't
believe you would ever marry otherwise--I should give you a good
fortune."  Upon which her comment, in a private diary, was:  "Like
a fool I have consented to give up the fees for this term only--
though I am miserably poor.  It was foolish.  It only defers the
struggle."[18]

'There she was right.  The struggle with her own father was over.
But the struggle with fathers in general, with the patriarchy
itself, was deferred to another place and another time.  The second
fight was at Edinburgh in 1869.  She had applied for admission to
the Royal College of Surgeons.  Here is a newspaper account of the
first skirmish.  "A disturbance of a very unbecoming nature took
place yesterday afternoon in front of the Royal College of Surgeons
... Shortly before four o'clock...nearly 200 students
assembled in front of the gate leading to the building..." the
medical students howled and sang songs.  "The gate was closed in
their [the women's] faces... Dr Handyside found it utterly
impossible to begin his demonstration...a pet sheep was
introduced into the room" and so on.  The methods were much the
same as those that were employed at Cambridge during the battle of
the Degree.  And again, as on that occasion, the authorities
deplored those downright methods and employed others, more astute
and more effective, of their own.  Nothing would induce the
authorities encamped within the sacred gates to allow the women to
enter.  They said that God was on their side, Nature was on their
side, Law was on their side, and Property was on their side.  The
college was founded for the benefit of men only; men only were
entitled by law to benefit from its endowments.  The usual
committees were formed.  The usual petitions were signed.  The
humble appeals were made.  The usual bazaars were held.  The usual
questions of tactics were debated.  As usual it was asked, ought we
to attack now, or is it wiser to wait?  Who are our friends and who
are our enemies?  There were the usual differences of opinion, the
usual divisions among the counsellors.  But why particularize?  The
whole proceeding is so familiar that the battle of Harley Street in
the year 1869 might well be the battle of Cambridge University at
the present moment.  On both occasions there is the same waste of
strength, waste of temper, waste of time, and waste of money.
Almost the same daughters ask almost the same brothers for almost
the same privileges.  Almost the same gentlemen intone the same
refusals for almost the same reasons.  It seems as if there were no
progress in the human race, but only repetition.  We can almost
hear them if we listen singing the same old song, "Here we go round
the mulberry tree, the mulberry tree, the mulberry tree" and if we
add, "of property, of property, of property," we shall fill in the
rhyme without doing violence to the facts.

'But we are not here to sing old songs or to fill in missing
rhymes.  We are here to consider facts.  And the facts which we
have just extracted from biography seem to prove that the
professions have a certain undeniable effect upon the professors.
They make the people who practise them possessive, jealous of any
infringement of their rights, and highly combative if anyone dares
dispute them.  Are we not right then in thinking that if we enter
the same professions we shall acquire the same qualities?  And do
not such qualities lead to war?  In another century or so if we
practise the professions in the same way, shall we not be just as
possessive, just as jealous, just as pugnacious, just as positive
as to the verdict of God, Nature, Law and Property as these
gentlemen are now?  Therefore this guinea, which is to help you to
help women to enter the professions, has this condition as a first
condition attached to it.  You shall swear that you will do all in
your power to insist that any woman who enters any profession shall
in no way hinder any other human being, whether man or woman, white
or black, provided that he or she is qualified to enter that
profession, from entering it; but shall do all in her power to help
them.

'You are ready to put your hand to that, here and now, you say, and
at the same time stretch out that hand for the guinea.  But wait.
Other conditions are attached to it before it is yours.  For
consider once more the procession of the sons of educated men; ask
yourself once more, where is it leading us?  One answer suggests
itself instantly.  To incomes, it is obvious, that seem, to us at
least, extremely handsome.  Whitaker puts that beyond a doubt.  And
besides the evidence of Whitaker, there is the evidence of the
daily paper--the evidence of the wills, of the subscription lists
that we have considered already.  In one issue of one paper, for
example, it is stated that three educated men died; and one left
£1,193,251; another £1,010,288; another £1,404,132.  These are
large sums for private people to amass, you will admit.  And why
should we not amass them too in course of time?  Now that the Civil
Service is open to us we may well earn from one thousand to three
thousand a year; now that the Bar is open to us we may well earn
£5,000 a year as judges, and any sum up to forty or fifty thousand
a year as barristers.  When the Church is open to us we may draw
salaries of fifteen thousand, five thousand, three thousand yearly,
with palaces and deaneries attached.  When the Stock Exchange is
open to us we may die worth as many millions as Pierpont Morgan, or
as Rockefeller himself.  As doctors we may make anything from two
thousand to fifty thousand a year.  As editors even we may earn
salaries that are by no means despicable.  One has a thousand a
year; another two thousand; it is rumoured that the editor of a
great daily paper has a salary of five thousand yearly.  All this
wealth may in the course of time come our way if we follow the
professions.  In short, we may change our position from being the
victims of the patriarchal system, paid on the truck system, with
£30 or £40 a year in cash and board and lodging thrown in, to being
the champions of the capitalist system, with a yearly income in our
own possession of many thousands which, by judicious investment,
may leave us when we die possessed of a capital sum of more
millions than we can count.

'It is a thought not without its glamour.  Consider what it would
mean if among us there were now a woman motorcar manufacturer who,
with a stroke of the pen, could endow the women's colleges with two
or three hundred thousand pounds apiece.  The honorary treasurer of
the rebuilding fund, your sister at Cambridge, would have her
labours considerably lightened then.  There would be no need of
appeals and committees, of strawberries and cream and bazaars.  And
suppose that there were not merely one rich woman, but that rich
women were as common as rich men.  What could you not do?  You
could shut up your office at once.  You could finance a woman's
party in the House of Commons.  You could run a daily newspaper
committed to a conspiracy, not of silence, but of speech.  You
could get pensions for spinsters; those victims of the patriarchal
system, whose allowance is insufficient and whose board and lodging
are no longer thrown in.  You could get equal pay for equal work.
You could provide every mother with chloroform when her child is
born;[19] bring down the maternal death-rate from four in every
thousand to none at all, perhaps.  In one session you could pass
Bills that will now take you perhaps a hundred years of hard and
continuous labour to get through the House of Commons.  There seems
at first sight nothing that you could not do, if you had the same
capital at your disposal that your brothers have at theirs.  Why
not, then, you exclaim, help us to take the first step towards
possessing it?  The professions are the only way in which we can
earn money.  Money is the only means by which we can achieve
objects that are immensely desirable.  Yet here you are, you seem
to protest, haggling and bargaining over conditions.  But consider
this letter from a professional man asking us to help him to
prevent war.  Look also at the photographs of dead bodies and
ruined houses that the Spanish Government sends almost weekly.
That is why it is necessary to haggle and to bargain over
conditions.

'For the evidence of the letter and of the photographs when
combined with the facts with which history and biography provide us
about the professions seem together to throw a certain light, a red
light, shall we say, upon those same professions.  You make money
in them; that is true; but how far is money in view of those facts
in itself a desirable possession?  A great authority upon human
life, you will remember, held over two thousand years ago that
great possessions were undesirable.  To which you reply, and with
some heat as if you suspected another excuse for keeping the purse-
string tied, that Christ's words about the rich and the Kingdom of
Heaven are no longer helpful to those who have to face different
facts in a different world.  You argue that as things are now in
England extreme poverty is less desirable than extreme wealth.  The
poverty of the Christian who should give away all his possessions
produces, as we have daily and abundant proof, the crippled in
body, the feeble in mind.  The unemployed, to take the obvious
example, are not a source of spiritual or intellectual wealth to
their country.  These are weighty arguments; but consider for a
moment the life of Pierpont Morgan.  Do you not agree with that
evidence before us that extreme wealth is equally undesirable, and
for the same reasons?  If extreme wealth is undesirable and extreme
poverty is undesirable, it is arguable that there is some mean
between the two which is desirable.  What then is that mean--how
much money is needed to live upon in England today?  How should
that money be spent?  What is the kind of life, the kind of human
being, you propose to aim at if you succeed in extracting this
guinea?  Those, Madam, are the questions that I am asking you to
consider and you cannot deny that those are questions of the utmost
importance.  But alas, they are questions that would lead us far
beyond the solid world of actual fact to which we are here
confined.  So let us shut the New Testament; Shakespeare, Shelley,
Tolstoy and the rest, and face the fact that stares us in the face
at this moment of transition--the fact of the procession; the fact
that we are trapesing along somewhere in the rear and must consider
that fact before we can fix our eyes upon the vision on the
horizon.

'There it is then, before our eyes, the procession of the sons of
educated men, ascending those pulpits, mounting those steps,
passing in and out of those doors, preaching, teaching,
administering justice, practising medicine, making money.  And it
is obvious that if you are going to make the same incomes from the
same professions that those men make you will have to accept the
same conditions that they accept.  Even from an upper window and
from books we know or can guess what those conditions are.  You
will have to leave the house at nine and come back to it at six.
That leaves very little time for fathers to know their children.
You will have to do this daily from the age of twenty-one or so to
the age of about sixty-five.  That leaves very little time for
friendship, travel or art.  You will have to perform some duties
that are very arduous, others that are very barbarous.  You will
have to wear certain uniforms and profess certain loyalties.  If
you succeed in your profession the words "For God and Empire" will
very likely be written, like the address on a dog-collar, round
your neck.[20]  And if words have meaning, as words perhaps should
have meaning, you will have to accept that meaning and do what you
can to enforce it.  In short, you will have to lead the same lives
and profess the same loyalties that professional men have professed
for many centuries.  There can be no doubt of that.

'If you retaliate, what harm is there in that?  Why should we
hesitate to do what our fathers and grandfathers have done before
us?  Let us go into greater detail and consult the facts which are
nowadays open to the inspection of all who can read their mother
tongue in biography.  There they are, those innumerable and
invaluable works upon the shelves of your own library.  Let us
glance again rapidly at the lives of professional men who have
succeeded in their professions.  Here is an extract from the life
of a great lawyer.  "He went to his chambers about half-past nine
... He took briefs home with him...so that he was lucky if
he got to bed about one or two o'clock in the morning."[21]  That
explains why most successful barristers are hardly worth sitting
next at dinner--they yawn so.  Next, here is a quotation from a
famous politician's speech.  "...since 1914 I have never seen
the pageant of the blossom from the first damson to the last apple--
never once have I seen that in Worcestershire since 1914, and if
that is not a sacrifice I do not know what is."[22]  A sacrifice
indeed, and one that explains the perennial indifference of the
Government to art--why, these unfortunate gentlemen must be as
blind as bats.  Take the religious profession next.  Here is a
quotation from the life of a great bishop.  "This is an awful mind-
and-soul-destroying life.  I really do not know how to live it.
The arrears of important work accumulate and crush."[23]  That bears
out what so many people are saying now about the Church and the
nation.  Our bishops and deans seem to have no soul with which to
preach and no mind with which to write.  Listen to any sermon in
any church; read the journalism of Dean Alington or Dean Inge in
any newspaper.  Take the doctor's profession next.  "I have taken a
good deal over £13,000 during the year, but this cannot possibly be
maintained, and while it lasts it is slavery.  What I feel most is
being away from Eliza and the children so frequently on Sundays,
and again at Christmas."[24]  That is the complaint of a great
doctor; and his patient might well echo it, for what Harley Street
specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or
both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a
year?  But is the life of a professional writer any better?  Here
is a sample taken from the life of a highly successful journalist.
"On another day at this time he wrote a 1,600 words article on
Nietzsche, a leader of equal length on the railway strike for the
Standard, 600 words for the Tribune and in the evening was at Shoe
Lane."[25]  That explains among other things why the public reads
its politics with cynicism, and authors read their reviews with
foot-rules--it is the advertisement that counts; praise or blame
have ceased to have any meaning.  And with one more glance at the
politician's life, for his profession after all is the most
important practically, let us have done.  "Lord Hugh LOITERED IN
THE LOBBY... The Bill [the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill] was in
consequence dead, and the further chances of the cause were
relegated to the chances and mischances of another year."[26]  That
not only serves to explain a certain prevalent distrust of
politicians, but also reminds us that since you have the Pensions
Bill to steer through the lobbies of so just and humane an
institution as the House of Commons, we must not loiter too long
ourselves among these delightful biographies, but must try to sum
up the information which we have gained from them.

'What then do these quotations from the lives of successful
professional men prove, you ask?  They prove, as Whitaker proves
things, nothing whatever.  If Whitaker, that is, says that a bishop
is paid five thousand a year, that is a fact; it can be checked and
verified.  But if Bishop Gore says that the life of a bishop is "an
awful mind- and soul-destroying life" he is merely giving us his
opinion; the next bishop on the bench may flatly contradict him.
These quotations then prove nothing that can be checked and
verified; they merely cause us to hold opinions.  And those
opinions cause us to doubt and criticize and question the value of
professional life--not its cash value; that is great; but its
spiritual, its moral, its intellectual value.  They make us of the
opinion that if people are highly successful in their professions
they lose their senses.  Sight goes.  They have no time to look at
pictures.  Sound goes.  They have no time to listen to music.
Speech goes.  They have no time for conversation.  They lose their
sense of proportion--the relations between one thing and another.
Humanity goes.  Money making becomes so important that they must
work by night as well as by day.  Health goes.  And so competitive
do they become that they will not share their work with others
though they have more than they can do themselves.  What then
remains of a human being who has lost sight, and sound, and sense
of proportion?  Only a cripple in a cave.

'That of course is a figure, and fanciful; but that it has some
connection with figures that are statistical and not fanciful--with
the three hundred millions spent upon arms--seems possible.  Such
at any rate would seem to be the opinion of disinterested observers
whose position gives them every opportunity for judging widely, and
for judging fairly.  Let us examine two such opinions only.  The
Marquess of Londonderry said:


We seem to hear a babel of voices among which direction and
guidance are lacking, and the world appears to be marking time...
During the last century gigantic forces of scientific discovery
had been unloosed, while at the same time we could discern no
corresponding advance in literary or scientific achievement...
The question we are asking ourselves is whether man is capable of
enjoying these new fruits of scientific knowledge and discovery, or
whether by their misuse he will bring about the destruction of
himself and the edifice of civilization.[27]


'Mr Churchill said:


Certain it is that while men are gathering knowledge and power with
ever-increasing and measureless speed, their virtues and their
wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have
rolled.  The brain of a modern man does not differ in essentials
from that of the human beings who fought and loved here millions of
years ago.  The nature of man has remained hitherto practically
unchanged.  Under sufficient stress--starvation, terror, warlike
passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy, the modern man we know
so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will
back him up.[28]


'Those are two quotations only from a great number to the same
effect.  And to them let us add another, from a less impressive
source but worth your reading since it too bears upon our problem,
from Mr Cyril Chaventry of North Wembley.


A woman's sense of values [he writes], is indisputably different
from that of a man.  Obviously therefore a woman is at a
disadvantage and under suspicion when in competition in a man-
created sphere of activity.  More than ever today women have the
opportunity to build a new and better world, but in this slavish
imitation of men they are wasting their chance.[29]


'That opinion, too, is a representative opinion, one from a great
number to the same effect provided by the daily papers.  And the
three quotations taken together are highly instructive.  The two
first seem to prove that the enormous professional competence of
the educated man has not brought about an altogether desirable
state of things in the civilized world; and the last, which calls
upon professional women to use "their different sense of values" to
"build a new and better world" not only implies that those who have
built that world are dissatisfied with the results, but, by calling
upon the other sex to remedy the evil imposes a great responsibility
and implies a great compliment.  For if Mr Chaventry and the
gentlemen who agree with him believe that "at a disadvantage and
under suspicion" as she is, with little or no political or
professional training and upon a salary of about £250 a year, the
professional woman can yet "build a new and better world", they must
credit her with powers that might almost be called divine.  They
must agree with Goethe:


     The things that must pass
     Are only symbols;
     Here shall all failure
     Grow to achievement,
     Here, the Untellable
     Work all fulfilment,
     The woman in woman
     Lead forward for ever[30]


--another very great compliment, and from a very great poet you
will agree.

'But you do not want compliments; you are pondering quotations.
And since your expression is decidedly downcast, it seems as if
these quotations about the nature of professional life have brought
you to some melancholy conclusion.  What can it be?  Simply, you
reply, that we, daughters of educated men, are between the devil
and the deep sea.  Behind us lies the patriarchal system; the
private house, with its nullity, its immorality, its hypocrisy, its
servility.  Before us lies the public world, the professional
system, with its possessiveness, its jealousy, its pugnacity, its
greed.  The one shuts us up like slaves in a harem; the other
forces us to circle, like caterpillars head to tail, round and
round the mulberry tree, the sacred tree, of property.  It is a
choice of evils.  Each is bad.  Had we not better plunge off the
bridge into the river; give up the game; declare that the whole of
human life is a mistake and so end it?

'But before you take that step, Madam, a decisive one, unless you
share the opinion of the professors of the Church of England that
death is the gate of life--Mors Janua Vitae is written upon an arch
in St Paul's--in which case there is, of course, much to recommend
it, let us see if another answer is not possible.

'Another answer may be staring us in the face on the shelves of
your own library, once more in the biographies.  Is it not possible
that by considering the experiments that the dead have made with
their lives in the past we may find some help in answering the very
difficult question that is now forced upon us?  At any rate, let us
try.  The question that we will now put to biography is this:  For
reasons given above we are agreed that we must earn money in the
professions.  For reasons given above those professions seem to us
highly undesirable.  The questions we put to you, lives of the
dead, is how can we enter the professions and yet remain civilized
human beings; human beings, that is, who wish to prevent war?

'This time let us turn to the lives not of men but of women in the
nineteenth century--to the lives of professional women.  But there
would seem to be a gap in your library, Madam.  There are no lives
of professional women in the nineteenth century.  A Mrs Tomlinson,
the wife of a Mr Tomlinson, F.R.S., F.C.S., explains the reason.
This lady, who wrote a book "advocating the employment of young
ladies as nurses for children", says:  "...it seemed as if there
were no way in which an unmarried lady could earn a living but by
taking a situation as governess, for which post she was often unfit
by nature and education, or want of education."[31]  That was
written in 1859--less than 100 years ago.  That explains the gap on
your shelves.  There were no professional women, except
governesses, to have lives written of them.  And the lives of
governesses, that is the written lives, can be counted on the
fingers of one hand.  What then can we learn about the lives of
professional women from studying the lives of governesses?  Happily
old boxes are beginning to give up their old secrets.  Out the
other day crept one such document written about the year 1811.
There was, it appears, an obscure Miss Weeton, who used to scribble
down her thoughts upon professional life among other things when
her pupils were in bed.  Here is one such thought.  "Oh! how I have
burned to learn Latin, French, the Arts, the Sciences, anything
rather than the dog trot way of sewing, teaching, writing copies,
and washing dishes every day... Why are not females permitted
to study physics, divinity, astronomy, etc., etc., with their
attendants, chemistry, botany, logic, mathematics, &c.?"[32]  That
comment upon the lives of governesses, that question from the lips
of governesses, reaches us from the darkness.  It is illuminating,
too.  But let us go on groping; let us pick up a hint here and a
hint there as to the professions as they were practised by women in
the nineteenth century.  Next we find Anne Clough, the sister of
Arthur Clough, pupil of Dr Arnold, Fellow of Oriel, who, though she
served without a salary, was the first principal of Newnham, and
thus may be called a professional woman in embryo--we find her
training for her profession by "doing much of the housework"...
"earning money to pay off what had been lent by their friends",
"pressing for leave to keep a small school", reading books her
brother lent her, and exclaiming, "If I were a man, I would not
work for riches, to make myself a name or to leave a wealthy family
behind me.  No, I think I would work for my country, and make its
people my heirs."[33]  The nineteenth-century women were not without
ambition it seems.  Next we find Josephine Butler, who, though not
strictly speaking a professional woman, led the campaign against
the Contagious Diseases Act to victory, and then the campaign
against the sale and purchase of children "for infamous purposes"--
we find Josephine Butler refusing to have a life of herself
written, and saying of the women who helped her in those campaigns:
"The utter absence in them of any desire for recognition, of any
vestige of egotism in any form, is worthy of remark.  In the purity
of their motives they shine out 'clear as crystal'."[34]  That,
then, was one of the qualities that the Victorian woman praised and
practised--a negative one, it is true; not to be recognized; not to
be egotistical; to do the work for the sake of doing the work.[35]
An interesting contribution to psychology in its way.  And then we
come closer to our own time; we find Gertrude Bell, who, though the
diplomatic service was and is shut to women, occupied a post in the
East which almost entitled her to be called a pseudo-diplomat--we
find rather to our surprise that "Gertrude could never go out in
London without a female friend or, failing that, a maid.[36]...
when it seemed unavoidable for Gertrude to drive in a hansom with a
young man from one tea party to another, she feels obliged to write
and confess it to my mother."[37]  So they were chaste, the women
pseudo-diplomats of the Victorian Age?[38]  And not merely in body;
in mind also.  "Gertrude was not allowed to read Bourget's The
Disciple" for fear of contracting whatever disease that book may
disseminate.  Dissatisfied but ambitious, ambitious but austere,
chaste yet adventurous--such are some of the qualities that we have
discovered.  But let us go on looking--if not at the lines, then
between the lines of biography.  And we find, between the lines of
their husbands' biographies, so many women practising--but what are
we to call the profession that consists in bringing nine or ten
children into the world, the profession which consists in running a
house, nursing an invalid, visiting the poor and the sick, tending
here an old father, there an old mother?--there is no name and
there is no pay for that profession; but we find so many mothers,
sisters and daughters of educated men practising it in the
nineteenth century that we must lump them and their lives together
behind their husbands' and brothers', and leave them to deliver
their message to those who have the time to extract it and the
imagination with which to decipher it.  Let us ourselves, who as
you hint are pressed for time, sum up these random hints and
reflections upon the professional life of women in the nineteenth
century by quoting once more the highly significant words of a
woman who was not a professional woman in the strict sense of the
word, but had some nondescript reputation as a traveller
nevertheless--Mary Kingsley:


I don't know if I ever revealed the fact to you that being allowed
to learn German was ALL the paid-for education I ever had.  £2,000
was spent on my brother's.  I still hope not in vain.


'That statement is so suggestive that it may save us the bother of
groping and searching between the lines of professional men's lives
for the lives of their sisters.  If we develop the suggestions we
find in that statement, and connect it with the other hints and
fragments that we have uncovered, we may arrive at some theory or
point of view that may help us to answer the very difficult
question, which now confronts us.  For when Mary Kingsley says,
"...being allowed to learn German was ALL the paid-for education
I ever had", she suggests that she had an unpaid-for education.
The other lives that we have been examining corroborate that
suggestion.  What then was the nature of that "unpaid-for
education" which, whether for good or for evil, has been ours for
so many centuries?  If we mass the lives of the obscure behind four
lives that were not obscure, but were so successful and
distinguished that they were actually written, the lives of
Florence Nightingale, Miss Clough, Mary Kingsley and Gertrude Bell,
it seems undeniable that they were all educated by the same
teachers.  And those teachers, biography indicates, obliquely, and
indirectly, but emphatically and indisputably none the less, were
poverty, chastity, derision, and--but what word covers "lack of
rights and privileges"?  Shall we press the old word "freedom" once
more into service?  "Freedom from unreal loyalties", then, was the
fourth of their teachers; that freedom from loyalty to old schools,
old colleges, old churches, old ceremonies, old countries which all
those women enjoyed, and which, to a great extent, we still enjoy
by the law and custom of England.  We have no time to coin new
words, greatly though the language is in need of them.  Let
"freedom from unreal loyalties" then stand as the fourth great
teacher of the daughters of educated men.

'Biography thus provides us with the fact that the daughters of
educated men received an unpaid-for education at the hands of
poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal loyalties.  It
was this unpaid for education, biography informs us, that fitted
them, aptly enough, for the unpaid-for professions.  And biography
also informs us that those unpaid-for professions had their laws,
traditions, and labours no less certainly than the paid-for
professions.  Further, the student of biography cannot possibly
doubt from the evidence of biography that this education and these
professions were in many ways bad in the extreme, both for the
unpaid themselves and for their descendants.  The intensive
childbirth of the unpaid wife, the intensive money-making of the
paid husband in the Victorian age had terrible results, we cannot
doubt, upon the mind and body of the present age.  To prove it we
need not quote once more the famous passage in which Florence
Nightingale denounced that education and its results; nor stress
the natural delight with which she greeted the Crimean war; nor
illustrate from other sources--they are, alas, innumerable--the
inanity, the pettiness, the spite, the tyranny, the hypocrisy, the
immorality which it engendered as the lives of both sexes so
abundantly testify.  Final proof of its harshness upon one sex at
any rate can be found in the annals of our "great war", when
hospitals, harvest fields and munition works were largely staffed
by refugees flying from its horrors to their comparative amenity.

'But biography is many-sided; biography never returns a single and
simple answer to any question that is asked of it.  Thus the
biographies of those who had biographies--say Florence Nightingale,
Anne Clough, Emily Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Mary Kingsley--prove
beyond a doubt that this same education, the unpaid for, must have
had great virtues as well as great defects, for we cannot deny that
these, if not educated, still were civilized women.  We cannot,
when we consider the lives of our uneducated mothers and
grandmothers, judge education simply by its power to "obtain
appointments", to win honour, to make money.  We must if we are
honest, admit that some who had no paid-for education, no salaries
and no appointments were civilized human beings--whether or not
they can rightly be called "English" women is matter for dispute;
and thus admit that we should be extremely foolish if we threw away
the results of that education or gave up the knowledge that we have
obtained from it for any bribe or decoration whatsoever.  Thus
biography, when asked the question we have put to it--how can we
enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings, human
beings who discourage war, would seem to reply:  If you refuse to
be separated from the four great teachers of the daughters of
educated men--poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal
loyalties--but combine them with some wealth, some knowledge, and
some service to real loyalties then you can enter the professions
and escape the risks that make them undesirable.

'Such being the answer of the oracle, such are the conditions
attached to this guinea.  You shall have it, to recapitulate, on
condition that you help all properly qualified people, of whatever
sex, class or colour, to enter your profession; and further on
condition that in the practice of your profession you refuse to be
separated from poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal
loyalties.  Is the statement now more positive, have the conditions
been made more clear and do you agree to the terms?  You hesitate.
Some of the conditions, you seem to suggest, need further
discussion.  Let us take them, then, in order.  By poverty is meant
enough money to live upon.  That is, you must earn enough to be
independent of any other human being and to buy that modicum of
health, leisure, knowledge and so on that is needed for the full
development of body and mind.  But no more.  Not a penny more.

'By chastity is meant that when you have made enough to live on by
your profession you must refuse to sell your brain for the sake of
money.  That is you must cease to practise your profession, or
practise it for the sake of research and experiment; or, if you are
an artist, for the sake of the art; or give the knowledge acquired
professionally to those who need it for nothing.  But directly the
mulberry tree begins to make you circle, break off.  Pelt the tree
with laughter.

'By derision--a bad word, but once again the English language is
much in need of new words--is meant that you must refuse all
methods of advertising merit, and hold that ridicule, obscurity and
censure are preferable, for psychological reasons, to fame and
praise.  Directly badges, orders, or degrees are offered you, fling
them back in the giver's face.

'By freedom from unreal loyalties is meant that you must rid
yourself of pride and nationality in the first place; also of
religious pride, college pride, school pride, family pride, sex
pride and those unreal loyalties that spring from them.  Directly
the seducers come with their seductions to bribe you into
captivity, tear up the parchments; refuse to fill up the forms.

'And if you still object that these definitions are both too
arbitrary and too general, and ask how anybody can tell how much
money and how much knowledge are needed for the full development of
body and mind, and which are the real loyalties which we must serve
and which the unreal which we must despise, I can only refer you--
time presses--to two authorities.  One is familiar enough.  It is
the psychometer that you carry on your wrist, the little instrument
upon which you depend in all personal relationships.  If it were
visible it would look something like a thermometer.  It has a vein
of quicksilver in it which is affected by any body or soul, house
or society in whose presence it is exposed.  If you want to find
out how much wealth is desirable, expose it in a rich man's
presence; how much learning is desirable expose it in a learned
man's presence.  So with patriotism, religion and the rest.  The
conversation need not be interrupted while you consult it; nor its
amenity disturbed.  But if you object that this is too personal and
fallible a method to employ without risk of mistake, witness the
fact that the private psychometer has led to many unfortunate
marriages and broken friendships, then there is the other authority
now easily within the reach even of the poorest of the daughters of
educated men.  Go to the public galleries and look at pictures;
turn on the wireless and rake down music from the air; enter any of
the public libraries which are now free to all.  There you will be
able to consult the findings of the public psychometer for
yourself.  To take one example, since we are pressed for time.  The
Antigone of Sophocles has been done into English prose or verse by
a man whose name is immaterial.[39]  Consider the character of
Creon.  There you have a most profound analysis by a poet, who is a
psychologist in action, of the effect of power and wealth upon the
soul.  Consider Creon's claim to absolute rule over his subjects.
That is a far more instructive analysis of tyranny than any our
politicians can offer us.  You want to know which are the unreal
loyalties which we must despise, which are the real loyalties which
we must honour?  Consider Antigone's distinction between the laws
and the Law.  That is a far more profound statement of the duties
of the individual to society than any our sociologists can offer
us.  Lame as the English rendering is, Antigone's five words are
worth all the sermons of all the archbishops.[40]  But to enlarge
would be impertinent.  Private judgement is still free in private
and that freedom is the essence of freedom.

'For the rest, though the conditions may seem many and the guinea,
alas, is single, they are not for the most part as things are at
present very difficult of fulfilment.  With the exception of the
first--that we must earn enough money to live upon--they are
largely ensured us by the laws of England.  The law of England sees
to it that we do not inherit great possessions; the law of England
denies us, and let us hope will long continue to deny us, the full
stigma of nationality.  Then we can scarcely doubt that our
brothers will provide us for many centuries to come, as they have
done for many centuries past, with what is so essential for sanity,
and so invaluable in preventing the great modern sins of vanity,
egotism, megalomania--that is to say ridicule, censure and
contempt.[41]  And so long as the Church of England refuses our
services--long may she exclude us!--and the ancient schools and
colleges refuse to admit us to a share of their endowments and
privileges we shall be immune without any trouble on our part from
the particular loyalties and fealties which such endowments and
privileges engender.  Further, Madam, the traditions of the private
house, that ancestral memory which lies behind the present moment,
are there to help you.  We have seen in the quotations given above
how great a part chastity, bodily chastity, has played in the
unpaid education of our sex.  It should not be difficult to
transmute the old ideal of bodily chastity into the new ideal of
mental chastity--to hold that if it was wrong to sell the body for
money it is much more wrong to sell the mind for money, since the
mind, people say, is nobler than the body.  Then again, are we not
greatly fortified in resisting the seductions of the most powerful
of all seducers--money--by those same traditions?  For how many
centuries have we not enjoyed the right of working all day and
every day for £40 a year with board and lodging thrown in?  And
does not Whitaker prove that half the work of educated men's
daughters is still unpaid-for work?  Finally, honour, fame,
consequence--is it not easy for us to resist that seduction, we who
have worked for centuries without other honour than that which is
reflected from the coronets and badges on our father's or husband's
brows and breasts?

'Thus, with law on our side, and property on our side, and
ancestral memory to guide us, there is no need of further argument;
you will agree that the conditions upon which this guinea is yours
are, with the exception of the first, comparatively easy to fulfil.
They merely require that you should develop, modify and direct by
the findings of the two psychometers the traditions and the
education of the private house which have been in existence these
2,000 years.  And if you will agree to do that, there can be an end
of bargaining between us.  Then the guinea with which to pay the
rent of your house is yours--would that it were a thousand!  For if
you agree to these terms then you can join the professions and yet
remain uncontaminated by them; you can rid them of their
possessiveness, their jealousy, their pugnacity, their greed.  You
can use them to have a mind of your own and a will of your own.
And you can use that mind and will to abolish the inhumanity, the
beastliness, the horror, the folly of war.  Take this guinea then
and use it, not to burn the house down, but to make its windows
blaze.  And let the daughters of uneducated women dance round the
new house, the poor house, the house that stands in a narrow street
where omnibuses pass and the street hawkers cry their wares, and
let them sing, "We have done with war!  We have done with tyranny!"
And their mothers will laugh from their graves, "It was for this
that we suffered obloquy and contempt!  Light up the windows of the
new house, daughters!  Let them blaze!"

'Those then are the terms upon which I give you this guinea with
which to help the daughters of uneducated women to enter the
professions.  And by cutting short the peroration let us hope that
you will be able to give the finishing touches to your bazaar,
arrange the hare and the coffee-pot, and receive the Right
Honourable Sir Sampson Legend, O.M., K.C.B., LL.D., D.C.L., P.C.,
etc., with that air of smiling deference which befits the daughter
of an educated man in the presence of her brother.'

Such then, Sir, was the letter finally sent to the honorary
treasurer of the society for helping the daughters of educated men
to enter the professions.  Those are the conditions upon which she
is to have her guinea.  They have been framed, so far as possible,
to ensure that she shall do all that a guinea can make her do to
help you to prevent war.  Whether the conditions have been rightly
laid down, who shall say?  But as you will see, it was necessary to
answer her letter and the letter from the honorary treasurer of the
college rebuilding fund, and to send them both guineas before
answering your letter, because unless they are helped, first to
educate the daughters of educated men, and then to earn their
living in the professions, those daughters cannot possess an
independent and disinterested influence with which to help you to
prevent war.  The causes it seems are connected.  But having shown
this to the best of our ability, let us return to your own letter
and to your request for a subscription to your own society.



Three


Here then is your own letter.  In that, as we have seen, after
asking for an opinion as to how to prevent war, you go on to
suggest certain practical measures by which we can help you to
prevent it.  These are it appears that we should sign a manifesto,
pledging ourselves 'to protect culture and intellectual liberty';[1]
that we should join a certain society, devoted to certain measures
whose aim is to preserve peace; and, finally, that we should
subscribe to that society which like the others is in need of
funds.

First, then, let us consider how we can help you to prevent war by
protecting culture and intellectual liberty, since you assure us
that there is a connection between those rather abstract words and
these very positive photographs--the photographs of dead bodies and
ruined houses.

But if it was surprising to be asked for an opinion how to prevent
war, it is still more surprising to be asked to help you in the
rather abstract terms of your manifesto to protect culture and
intellectual liberty.  Consider, Sir, in the light of the facts
given above, what this request of yours means.  It means that in
the year 1938 the sons of educated men are asking the daughters to
help them to protect culture and intellectual liberty.  And why,
you may ask, is that so surprising?  Suppose that the Duke of
Devonshire, in his star and garter, stepped down into the kitchen
and said to the maid who was peeling potatoes with a smudge on her
cheek:  'Stop your potato peeling, Mary, and help me to construe
this rather difficult passage in Pindar,' would not Mary be
surprised and run screaming to Louisa the cook, 'Lawks, Louie,
Master must be mad!'  That, or something like it, is the cry that
rises to our lips when the sons of educated men ask us, their
sisters, to protect intellectual liberty and culture.  But let us
try to translate the kitchen-maid's cry into the language of
educated people.

Once more we must beg you, Sir, to look from our angle, from our
point of view, at Arthur's Education Fund.  Try once more,
difficult though it is to twist your head in that direction, to
understand what it has meant to us to keep that receptacle filled
all these centuries so that some 10,000 of our brothers may be
educated every year at Oxford and Cambridge.  It has meant that we
have already contributed to the cause of culture and intellectual
liberty more than any other class in the community.  For have not
the daughters of educated men paid into Arthur's Education Fund
from the year 1262 to the year 1870 all the money that was needed
to educate themselves, bating such miserable sums as went to pay
the governess, the German teacher, and the dancing master?  Have
they not paid with their own education for Eton and Harrow, Oxford
and Cambridge, and all the great schools and universities on the
continent--the Sorbonne and Heidelberg, Salamanca and Padua and
Rome?  Have they not paid so generously and lavishly if so
indirectly, that when at last, in the nineteenth century, they won
the right to some paid-for education for themselves, there was not
a single woman who had received enough paid-for education to be
able to teach them?[2]  And now, out of the blue, just as they were
hoping that they might filch not only a little of that same
university education for themselves but some of the trimmings--
travel, pleasure, liberty--for themselves, here is your letter
informing them that the whole of that vast, that fabulous sum--for
whether counted directly in cash, or indirectly in things done
without, the sum that filled Arthur's Education Fund is vast--has
been wasted or wrongly applied.  With what other purpose were the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge founded, save to protect
culture and intellectual liberty?  For what other object did your
sisters go without teaching or travel or luxuries themselves except
that with the money so saved their brothers should go to schools
and universities and there learn to protect culture and
intellectual liberty?  But now since you proclaim them in danger
and ask us to add our voice to yours, and our sixpence to your
guinea, we must assume that the money so spent was wasted and that
those societies have failed.  Yet, the reflection must intrude, if
the public schools and universities with their elaborate machinery
for mind-training and body-training have failed, what reason is
there to think that your society, sponsored though it is by
distinguished names, is going to succeed, or that your manifesto,
signed though it is by still more distinguished names, is going to
convert?  Ought you not, before you lease an office, hire a
secretary, elect a committee and appeal for funds, to consider why
those schools and universities have failed?

That, however, is a question for you to answer.  The question which
concerns us is what possible help we can give you in protecting
culture and intellectual liberty--we, who have been shut out from
the universities so repeatedly, and are only now admitted so
restrictedly; we who have received no paid-for education
whatsoever, or so little that we can only read our own tongue and
write our own language, we who are, in fact, members not of the
intelligentsia but of the ignorantsia?  To confirm us in our modest
estimate of our own culture and to prove that you in fact share it
there is Whitaker with his facts.  Not a single educated man's
daughter, Whitaker says, is thought capable of teaching the
literature of her own language at either university.  Nor is her
opinion worth asking, Whitaker informs us, when it comes to buying
a picture for the National Gallery, a portrait for the Portrait
Gallery, or a mummy for the British Museum.  How then can it be
worth your while to ask us to protect culture and intellectual
liberty when, as Whitaker proves with his cold facts, you have no
belief that our advice is worth having when it comes to spending
the money, to which we have contributed, in buying culture and
intellectual liberty for the State?  Do you wonder that the
unexpected compliment takes us by surprise?  Still, there is your
letter.  There are facts in that letter, too.  In it you say that
war is imminent; and you go on to say, in more languages than one--
here is the French version:[3]  Seule la culture désintéressée peut
garder le monde de sa ruine--you go on to say that by protecting
intellectual liberty and our inheritance of culture we can help you
to prevent war.  And since the first statement at least is
indisputable and any kitchenmaid even if her French is defective
can read and understand the meaning of 'Air Raid Precautions' when
written in large letters upon a blank wall, we cannot ignore your
request on the plea of ignorance or remain silent on the plea of
modesty.  Just as any kitchen-maid would attempt to construe a
passage in Pindar if told that her life depended on it, so the
daughters of educated men, however little their training qualifies
them, must consider what they can do to protect culture and
intellectual liberty if by so doing they can help you to prevent
war.  So let us by all means in our power examine this further
method of helping you, and see, before we consider your request
that we should join your society, whether we can sign this
manifesto in favour of culture and intellectual liberty with some
intention of keeping our word.

What, then, is the meaning of those rather abstract words?  If we
are to help you to protect them it would be well to define them in
the first place.  But like all honorary treasurers you are pressed
for time, and to ramble through English literature in search of a
definition, though a delightful pastime in its way, might well lead
us far.  Let us agree, then, for the present, that we know what
they are, and concentrate upon the practical question how we can
help you to protect them.  Now the daily paper with its provision
of facts lies on the table; and a single quotation from it may save
time and limit our inquiry.  'It was decided yesterday at a
conference of head masters that women were not fit teachers for
boys over the age of fourteen.'  That fact is of instant help to us
here, for it proves that certain kinds of help are beyond our
reach.  For us to attempt to reform the education of our brothers
at public schools and universities would be to invite a shower of
dead cats, rotten eggs and broken gates from which only street
scavengers and locksmiths would benefit, while the gentlemen in
authority, history assures us, would survey the tumult from their
study windows without taking the cigars from their lips or ceasing
to sip, slowly as its bouquet deserves, their admirable claret.[4]
The teaching of history, then, reinforced by the teaching of the
daily paper, drives us to a more restricted position.  We can only
help you to defend culture and intellectual liberty by defending
our own culture and our own intellectual liberty.  That is to say,
we can hint, if the treasurer of one of the women's colleges asks
us for a subscription, that some change might be made in that
satellite body when it ceases to be satellite; or again, if the
treasurer of some society for obtaining professional employment for
women asks us for a subscription, suggest that some change might be
desirable, in the interests of culture and intellectual liberty, in
the practice of the professions.  But as paid-for education is
still raw and young, and as the number of those allowed to enjoy it
at Oxford and Cambridge is still strictly limited, culture for the
great majority of educated men's daughters must still be that which
is acquired outside the sacred gates, in public libraries or in
private libraries, whose doors by some unaccountable oversight have
been left unlocked.  It must still, in the year 1938, largely
consist in reading and writing our own tongue.  The question thus
becomes more manageable.  Shorn of its glory it is easier to deal
with.  What we have to do now, then, Sir, is to lay your request
before the daughters of educated men and to ask them to help you to
prevent war, not by advising their brothers how they shall protect
culture and intellectual liberty, but simply by reading and writing
their own tongue in such a way as to protect those rather abstract
goddesses themselves.

This would seem, on the face of it, a simple matter, and one that
needs neither argument nor rhetoric.  But we are met at the outset
by a new difficulty.  We have already noted the fact that the
profession of literature, to give it a simple name, is the only
profession which did not fight a series of battles in the
nineteenth century.  There has been no battle of Grub Street.  That
profession has never been shut to the daughters of educated men.
This was due of course to the extreme cheapness of its professional
requirements.  Books, pens and paper are so cheap, reading and
writing have been, since the eighteenth century at least, so
universally taught in our class, that it was impossible for any
body of men to corner the necessary knowledge or to refuse
admittance, except on their own terms, to those who wished to read
books or to write them.  But it follows, since the profession of
literature is open to the daughters of educated men, that there is
no honorary treasurer of the profession in such need of a guinea
with which to prosecute her battle that she will listen to our
terms, and promise to do what she can to observe them.  This places
us, you will agree, in an awkward predicament.  For how then can we
bring pressure upon them--what can we do to persuade them to help
us?  The profession of literature differs, it would seem, from all
the other professions.  There is no head of the profession; no Lord
Chancellor as in your own case: no official body with the power to
lay down rules and enforce them.[5]  We cannot debar women from the
use of libraries;[6] or forbid them to buy ink and paper; or rule
that metaphors shall only be used by one sex, as the male only in
art schools was allowed to study from the nude; or rule that rhyme
shall be used by one sex only as the male only in Academies of
music was allowed to play in orchestras.  Such is the inconceivable
licence of the profession of letters that any daughter of an
educated man may use a man's name--say George Eliot or George Sand--
with the result that an editor or a publisher, unlike the
authorities in Whitehall, can detect no difference in the scent or
savour of a manuscript, or even know for certain whether the writer
is married or not.

Thus, since we have very little power over those who earn their
livings by reading and writing, we must go to them humbly without
bribes or penalties.  We must go to them cap in hand, like beggars,
and ask them of their goodness to spare time to listen to our
request that they shall practise the profession of reading and
writing in the interests of culture and intellectual liberty.

And now, clearly, some further definition of 'culture and
intellectual liberty' would be useful.  Fortunately, it need not
be, for our purposes, exhaustive or elaborate.  We need not consult
Milton, Goethe, or Matthew Arnold; for their definition would apply
to paid-for culture--the culture which, in Miss Weeton's
definition, includes physics, divinity, astronomy, chemistry,
botany, logic and mathematics, as well as Latin, Greek and French.
We are appealing in the main to those whose culture is the unpaid-
for culture, that which consists in being able to read and write
their own tongue.  Happily your manifesto is at hand to help us to
define the terms further; 'disinterested' is the word you use.
Therefore let us define culture for our purposes as the
disinterested pursuit of reading and writing the English language.
And intellectual liberty may be defined for our purposes as the
right to say or write what you think in your own words, and in your
own way.  These are very crude definitions, but they must serve.
Our appeal then might begin:  'Oh, daughters of educated men, this
gentleman, whom we all respect, says that war is imminent; by
protecting culture and intellectual liberty he says that we can
help him to prevent war.  We entreat you, therefore, who earn your
livings by reading and writing...'  But here the words falter on
our lips, and the prayer peters out into three separate dots
because of facts again--because of facts in books, facts in
biographies, facts which make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to
go on.

What are those facts then?  Once more we must interrupt our appeal
in order to examine them.  And there is no difficulty in finding
them.  Here, for example, is an illuminating document before us, a
most genuine and indeed moving piece of work, the autobiography of
Mrs Oliphant, which is full of facts.  She was an educated man's
daughter who earned her living by reading and writing.  She wrote
books of all kinds.  Novels, biographies, histories, handbooks of
Florence and Rome, reviews, newspaper articles innumerable came
from her pen.  With the proceeds she earned her living and educated
her children.  But how far did she protect culture and intellectual
liberty?  That you can judge for yourself by reading first a few of
her novels; The Duke's Daughter, Diana Trelawny, Harry Joscelyn,
say; continue with the lives of Sheridan and Cervantes; go on to
the Makers of Florence and Rome; conclude by sousing yourself in
the innumerable faded articles, reviews, sketches of one kind and
another which she contributed to literary papers.  When you have
done, examine the state of your own mind, and ask yourself whether
that reading has led you to respect disinterested culture and
intellectual liberty.  Has it not on the contrary smeared your mind
and dejected your imagination, and led you to deplore the fact that
Mrs Oliphant sold her brain, her very admirable brain, prostituted
her culture and enslaved her intellectual liberty in order that she
might earn her living and educate her children?[7]  Inevitably,
considering the damage that poverty inflicts upon mind and body,
the necessity that is laid upon those who have children to see that
they are fed and clothed, nursed and educated, we have to applaud
her choice and to admire her courage.  But if we applaud the choice
and admire the courage of those who do what she did, we can spare
ourselves the trouble of addressing our appeal to them, for they
will no more be able to protect disinterested culture and
intellectual liberty than she was.  To ask them to sign your
manifesto would be to ask a publican to sign a manifesto in favour
of temperance.  He may himself be a total abstainer; but since his
wife and children depend upon the sale of beer, he must continue to
sell beer, and his signature to the manifesto would be of no value
to the cause of temperance because directly he had signed it he
must be at the counter inducing his customers to drink more beer.
So to ask the daughters of educated men who have to earn their
livings by reading and writing to sign your manifesto would be of
no value to the cause of disinterested culture and intellectual
liberty, because directly they had signed it they must be at the
desk writing those books, lectures and articles by which culture is
prostituted and intellectual liberty is sold into slavery.  As an
expression of opinion it may have value; but if what you need is
not merely an expression of opinion but positive help, you must
frame your request rather differently.  Then you will have to ask
them to pledge themselves not to write anything that denies
culture, or to sign any contract that infringes intellectual
liberty.  And to that the answer given us by biography would be
short but sufficient:  Have I not to earn my living?  Thus, Sir, it
becomes clear that we must make our appeal only to those daughters
of educated men who have enough to live upon.  To them we might
address ourselves in this wise:  'Daughters of educated men who
have enough to live upon...'  But again the voice falters: again
the prayer peters out into separate dots.  For how many of them are
there?  Dare we assume in the face of Whitaker, of the laws of
property, of the wills in the newspapers, of facts in short, that
1,000, 500, or even 250 will answer when thus addressed?  However
that may be, let the plural stand and continue:  'Daughters of
educated men who have enough to live upon, and read and write your
own language for your own pleasure, may we very humbly entreat you
to sign this gentleman's manifesto with some intention of putting
your promise into practice?'

Here, if indeed they consent to listen, they might very reasonably
ask us to be more explicit--not indeed to define culture and
intellectual liberty, for they have books and leisure and can
define the words for themselves.  But what, they may well ask, is
meant by this gentleman's 'disinterested' culture, and how are we
to protect that and intellectual liberty in practice?  Now as they
are daughters, not sons, we may begin by reminding them of a
compliment once paid them by a great historian.  'Mary's conduct,'
says Macaulay, 'was really a signal instance of that perfect
disinterestedness and self-devotion of which man seems to be
incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.'[8]  Compliments,
when you are asking a favour, never come amiss.  Next let us refer
them to the tradition which has long been honoured in the private
house--the tradition of chastity.  'Just as for many centuries,
Madam,' we might plead, 'it was thought vile for a woman to sell
her body without love, but right to give it to the husband whom she
loved, so it is wrong, you will agree, to sell your mind without
love, but right to give it to the art which you love.'  'But what,'
she may ask, 'is meant by "selling your mind without love"?'
'Briefly,' we might reply, 'to write at the command of another
person what you do not want to write for the sake of money.  But to
sell a brain is worse than to sell a body, for when the body seller
has sold her momentary pleasure she takes good care that the matter
shall end there.  But when a brain seller has sold her brain, its
anaemic, vicious and diseased progeny are let loose upon the world
to infect and corrupt and sow the seeds of disease in others.  Thus
we are asking you, Madam, to pledge yourself not to commit adultery
of the brain because it is a much more serious offence than the
other.'  'Adultery of the brain,' she may reply, 'means writing
what I do not want to write for the sake of money.  Therefore you
ask me to refuse all publishers, editors, lecture agents and so on
who bribe me to write or to speak what I do not want to write or to
speak for the sake of money?'  'That is so, Madam; and we further
ask that if you should receive proposals for such sales you will
resent them and expose them as you would resent and expose such
proposals for selling your body, both for your own sake and for the
sake of others.  But we would have you observe that the verb "to
adulterate" means, according to the dictionary, "to falsify by
admixture of baser ingredients."  Money is not the only baser
ingredient.  Advertisement and publicity are also adulterers.
Thus, culture mixed with personal charm, or culture mixed with
advertisement and publicity, are also adulterated forms of culture.
We must ask you to abjure them; not to appear on public platforms;
not to lecture; not to allow your private face to be published, or
details of your private life; not to avail yourself, in short, of
any of the forms of brain prostitution which are so insidiously
suggested by the pimps and panders of the brain-selling trade; or
to accept any of those baubles and labels by which brain merit is
advertised and certified--medals, honours, degrees--we must ask you
to refuse them absolutely, since they are all tokens that culture
has been prostituted and intellectual liberty sold into captivity.'

Upon hearing this definition, mild and imperfect as it is, of what
it means, not merely to sign your manifesto in favour of culture
and intellectual liberty, but to put that opinion into practice,
even those daughters of educated men who have enough to live upon
may object that the terms are too hard for them to keep.  For they
would mean loss of money, which is desirable, loss of fame which is
universally held to be agreeable, and censure and ridicule which
are by no means negligible.  Each would be the butt of all who have
an interest to serve or money to make from the sale of brains.  And
for what reward?  Only, in the rather abstract terms of your
manifesto, that they would thus 'protect culture and intellectual
liberty', not by their opinion but by their practice.

Since the terms are so hard, and there is no body in existence
whose ruling they need respect or obey, let us consider what other
method of persuasion is left to us.  Only, it would seem, to point
to the photographs--the photographs of dead bodies and ruined
houses.  Can we bring out the connection between them and
prostituted culture and intellectual slavery and make it so clear
that the one implies the other, that the daughters of educated men
will prefer to refuse money and fame, and to be the objects of
scorn and ridicule rather than suffer themselves, or allow others
to suffer, the penalties there made visible?  It is difficult in
the short time at our disposal, and with the weak weapons in our
possession, to make that connection clear, but if what you, Sir,
say is true, and there is a connection and a very real one between
them, we must try to prove it.

Let us then begin by summoning, if only from the world of
imagination, some daughter of an educated man who has enough to
live upon and can read and write for her own pleasure and, taking
her to be the representative of what may in fact be no class at
all, let us ask her to examine the products of that reading and
writing which lie upon her own table.  'Look, Madam,' we might
begin, 'at the newspapers on your table.  Why, may we ask, do you
take in three dailies, and three weeklies?'  'Because,' she
replies, 'I am interested in politics, and wish to know the facts.'
'An admirable desire, Madam.  But why three?  Do they differ then
about facts, and if so, why?'  To which she replies, with some
irony, 'You call yourself an educated man's daughter, and yet
pretend not to know the facts--roughly that each paper is financed
by a board; that each board has a policy; that each board employs
writers to expound that policy, and if the writers do not agree
with that policy, the writers, as you may remember after a moment's
reflection, find themselves unemployed in the street.  Therefore if
you want to know any fact about politics you must read at least
three different papers, compare at least three different versions
of the same fact, and come in the end to your own conclusion.
Hence the three daily papers on my table.'  Now that we have
discussed, very briefly, what may be called the literature of fact,
let us turn to what may be called the literature of fiction.
'There are such things, Madam,' we may remind her, 'as pictures,
plays, music and books.  Do you pursue the same rather extravagant
policy there--glance at three daily papers and three weekly papers
if you want to know the facts about pictures, plays, music and
books, because those who write about art are in the pay of an
editor, who is in the pay of a board, which has a policy to pursue,
so that each paper takes a different view, so that it is only by
comparing three different views that you can come to your own
conclusion--what pictures to see, what play or concert to go to,
which book to order from the library?' And to that she replies,
'Since I am an educated man's daughter, with a smattering of
culture picked up from reading, I should no more dream, given the
conditions of journalism at present, of taking my opinions of
pictures, plays, music or books from the newspapers than I would
take my opinion of politics from the newspapers.  Compare the
views, make allowance for the distortions, and then judge for
yourself.  That is the only way.  Hence the many newspapers on my
table.'[9]

So then the literature of fact and the literature of opinion, to
make a crude distinction, are not pure fact, or pure opinion, but
adulterated fact and adulterated opinion, that is fact and opinion
'adulterated by the admixture of baser ingredients' as the
dictionary has it.  In other words you have to strip each statement
of its money motive, of its power motive, of its advertisement
motive, of its publicity motive, of its vanity motive, let alone of
all the other motives which, as an educated man's daughter, are
familiar to you, before you make up your mind which fact about
politics to believe, or even which opinion about art?  'That is
so,' she agrees.  But if you were told by somebody who had none of
those motives for wrapping up truth that the fact was in his or her
opinion this or that, you would believe him or her, always allowing
of course for the fallibility of human judgement which, in judging
works of art, must be considerable?  'Naturally,' she agrees.  If
such a person said that war was bad, you would believe him; or if
such a person said that some picture, symphony, play or poem were
good you would believe him?  'Allowing for human fallibility, yes.'
Now suppose, Madam, that there were 250 or 50, or 25 such people in
existence, people pledged not to commit adultery of the brain, so
that it was unnecessary to strip what they said of its money
motive, power motive, advertisement motive, publicity motive,
vanity motive and so on, before we unwrapped the grain of truth,
might not two very remarkable consequences follow?  Is it not
possible that if we knew the truth about war, the glory of war
would be scotched and crushed where it lies curled up in the rotten
cabbage leaves of our prostituted fact-purveyors; and if we knew
the truth about art instead of shuffling and shambling through the
smeared and dejected pages of those who must live by prostituting
culture, the enjoyment and practice of art would become so
desirable that by comparison the pursuit of war would be a tedious
game for elderly dilettantes in search of a mildly sanitary
amusement--the tossing of bombs instead of balls over frontiers
instead of nets?  In short, if newspapers were written by people
whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics
and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should
believe in art.

Hence there is a very clear connection between culture and
intellectual liberty and those photographs of dead bodies and
ruined houses.  And to ask the daughters of educated men who have
enough to live upon to commit adultery of the brain is to ask them
to help in the most positive way now open to them--since the
profession of literature is still that which stands widest open to
them--to prevent war.

Thus, Sir, we might address this lady, crudely, briefly it is true;
but time passes and we cannot define further.  And to this appeal
she might well reply, if indeed she exists:  'What you say is
obvious; so obvious that every educated man's daughter already
knows it for herself, or if she does not, has only to read the
newspapers to be sure of it.  But suppose she were well enough off
not merely to sign this manifesto in favour of disinterested
culture and intellectual liberty but to put her opinion into
practice, how could she set about it?  And do not,' she may
reasonably add, 'dream dreams about ideal worlds behind the stars;
consider actual facts in the actual world.'  Indeed, the actual
world is much more difficult to deal with than the dream world.
Still, Madam, the private printing press is an actual fact, and not
beyond the reach of a moderate income.  Typewriters and duplicators
are actual facts and even cheaper.  By using these cheap and so far
unforbidden instruments you can at once rid yourself of the
pressure of boards, policies and editors.  They will speak your own
mind, in your own words, at your own time, at your own length, at
your own bidding.  And that, we are agreed, is our definition of
'intellectual liberty.'  'But,' she may say, '"the public"?  How
can that be reached without putting my own mind through the mincing
machine and turning it into sausage?'  '"The public," Madam,' we
may assure her, 'is very like ourselves; it lives in rooms; it
walks in streets, and is said moreover to be tired of sausage.
Fling leaflets down basements; expose them on stalls; trundle them
along streets on barrows to be sold for a penny or given away.
Find out new ways of approaching "the public"; single it into
separate people instead of massing it into one monster, gross in
body, feeble in mind.  And then reflect--since you have enough to
live on, you have a room, not necessarily "cosy" or "handsome" but
still silent, private; a room where safe from publicity and its
poison you could, even asking a reasonable fee for the service,
speak the truth to artists, about pictures, music, books, without
fear of affecting their sales, which are exiguous, or wounding
their vanity, which is prodigious.[10]  Such at least was the
criticism that Ben Jonson gave Shakespeare at the Mermaid and there
is no reason to suppose, with Hamlet as evidence, that literature
suffered in consequence.  Are not the best critics private people,
and is not the only criticism worth having spoken criticism?  Those
then are some of the active ways in which you, as a writer of your
own tongue, can put your opinion into practice.  But if you are
passive, a reader, not a writer, then you must adopt not active but
passive methods of protecting culture and intellectual liberty.'
'And what may they be?' she will ask.  'To abstain, obviously.  Not
to subscribe to papers that encourage intellectual slavery; not to
attend lectures that prostitute culture; for we are agreed that to
write at the command of another what you do not want to write
is to be enslaved, and to mix culture with personal charm or
advertisement is to prostitute culture.  By these active and
passive measures you would do all in your power to break the ring,
the vicious circle, the dance round and round the mulberry tree,
the poison tree of intellectual harlotry.  The ring once broken,
the captives would be freed.  For who can doubt that once writers
had the chance of writing what they enjoy writing they would find
it so much more pleasurable that they would refuse to write on any
other terms; or that readers once they had the chance of reading
what writers enjoy writing, would find it so much more nourishing
than what is written for money that they would refuse to be palmed
off with the stale substitute any longer?  Thus the slaves who are
now kept hard at work piling words into books, piling words into
articles, as the old slaves piled stones into pyramids, would shake
the manacles from their wrists and give up their loathsome labour.
And "culture", that amorphous bundle, swaddled up as she now is in
insincerity, emitting half truths from her timid lips, sweetening
and diluting her message with whatever sugar or water serves to
swell the writer's fame or his master's purse, would regain her
shape and become, as Milton, Keats and other great writers assure
us that she is in reality, muscular, adventurous, free.  Whereas
now, Madam, at the very mention of culture the head aches, the eyes
close, the doors shut, the air thickens; we are in a lecture room,
rank with the fumes of stale print, listening to a gentleman who is
forced to lecture or to write every Wednesday, every Sunday, about
Milton or about Keats, while the lilac shakes its branches in the
garden free, and the gulls, swirling and swooping, suggest with
wild laughter that such stale fish might with advantage be tossed
to them.  That is our plea to you, Madam; those are our reasons for
urging it.  Do not merely sign this manifesto in favour of culture
and intellectual liberty; attempt at least to put your promise into
practice.'



Whether the daughters of educated men who have enough to live upon
and read and write their own tongue for their own pleasure will
listen to this request or not, we cannot say, Sir.  But if culture
and intellectual liberty are to be protected, not by opinions
merely but by practice, this would seem to be the way.  It is not
an easy way, it is true.  Nevertheless, such as it is, there are
reasons for thinking that the way is easier for them than for their
brothers.  They are immune, through no merit of their own, from
certain compulsions.  To protect culture and intellectual liberty
in practice would mean, as we have said, ridicule and chastity,
loss of publicity and poverty.  But those, as we have seen, are
their familiar teachers.  Further, Whitaker with his facts is at
hand to help them; for since he proves that all the fruits of
professional culture--such as directorships of art galleries and
museums, professorships and lectureships and editorships--are still
beyond their reach, they should be able to take a more purely
disinterested view of culture than their brothers, without for a
moment claiming, as Macaulay asserts, that they are by nature more
disinterested.  Thus helped by tradition and by facts as they are,
we have not only some right to ask them to help us to break the
circle, the vicious circle of prostituted culture, but some hope
that if such people exist they will help us.  To return then to
your manifesto: we will sign it if we can keep these terms; if we
cannot keep them, we will not sign it.

Now that we have tried to see how we can help you to prevent war by
attempting to define what is meant by protecting culture and
intellectual liberty let us consider your next and inevitable
request: that we should subscribe to the funds of your society.
For you, too, are an honorary treasurer, and like the other
honorary treasurers in need of money.  Since you, too, are asking
for money it might be possible to ask you, also, to define your
aims, and to bargain and to impose terms as with the other honorary
treasurers.  What then are the aims of your society?  To prevent
war, of course.  And by what means?  Broadly speaking, by
protecting the rights of the individual; by opposing dictatorship;
by ensuring the democratic ideals of equal opportunity for all.
Those are the chief means by which as you say, 'the lasting peace
of the world can be assured.'  Then, Sir, there is no need to
bargain or to haggle.  If those are your aims, and if, as it is
impossible to doubt, you mean to do all in your power to achieve
them, the guinea is yours--would that it were a million!  The
guinea is yours; and the guinea is a free gift, given freely.

But the word 'free' is used so often, and has come, like used
words, to mean so little, that it may be well to explain exactly,
even pedantically, what the word 'free' means in this context.  It
means here that no right or privilege is asked in return.  The
giver is not asking you to admit her to the priesthood of the
Church of England; or to the Stock Exchange; or to the Diplomatic
Service.  The giver has no wish to be 'English' on the same terms
that you yourself are 'English'.  The giver does not claim in
return for the gift admission to any profession; any honour, title,
or medal; any professorship or lectureship; any seat upon any
society, committee or board.  The gift is free from all such
conditions because the one right of paramount importance to all
human beings is already won.  You cannot take away her right to
earn a living.  Now then for the first time in English history an
educated man's daughter can give her brother one guinea of her own
making at his request for the purpose specified above without
asking for anything in return.  It is a free gift, given without
fear, without flattery, and without conditions.  That, Sir, is so
momentous an occasion in the history of civilization that some
celebration seems called for.  But let us have done with the old
ceremonies--the Lord Mayor, with turtles and sheriffs in
attendance, tapping nine times with his mace upon a stone while the
Archbishop of Canterbury in full canonicals invokes a blessing.
Let us invent a new ceremony for this new occasion.  What more
fitting than to destroy an old word, a vicious and corrupt word
that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete?  The word
'feminist' is the word indicated.  That word, according to the
dictionary, means 'one who champions the rights of women'.  Since
the only right, the right to earn a living, has been won, the word
no longer has a meaning.  And a word without a meaning is a dead
word, a corrupt word.  Let us therefore celebrate this occasion by
cremating the corpse.  Let us write that word in large black
letters on a sheet of foolscap; then solemnly apply a match to the
paper.  Look, how it burns!  What a light dances over the world!
Now let us bray the ashes in a mortar with a goose-feather pen, and
declare in unison singing together that anyone who uses that word
in future is a ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man,[11] a mischief maker,
a groper among old bones, the proof of whose defilement is written
in a smudge of dirty water upon his face.  The smoke has died down;
the word is destroyed.  Observe, Sir, what has happened as the
result of our celebration.  The word 'feminist' is destroyed; the
air is cleared; and in that clearer air what do we see?  Men and
women working together for the same cause.  The cloud has lifted
from the past too.  What were they working for in the nineteenth
century--those queer dead women in their poke bonnets and shawls?
The very same cause for which we are working now.  'Our claim was
no claim of women's rights only;'--it is Josephine Butler who
speaks--'it was larger and deeper; it was a claim for the rights of
all--all men and women--to the respect in their persons of the
great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.'  The words
are the same as yours; the claim is the same as yours.  The
daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment,
'feminists' were in fact the advance guard of your own movement.
They were fighting the same enemy that you are fighting and for the
same reasons.  They were fighting the tyranny of the patriarchal
state as you are fighting the tyranny of the Fascist state.  Thus
we are merely carrying on the same fight that our mothers and
grandmothers fought; their words prove it; your words prove it.
But now with your letter before us we have your assurance that you
are fighting with us, not against us.  That fact is so inspiring
that another celebration seems called for.  What could be more
fitting than to write more dead words, more corrupt words, upon
more sheets of paper and burn them--the words, Tyrant, Dictator,
for example?  But, alas, those words are not yet obsolete.  We can
still shake out eggs from newspapers; still smell a peculiar and
unmistakable odour in the region of Whitehall and Westminster.  And
abroad the monster has come more openly to the surface.  There is
no mistaking him there.  He has widened his scope.  He is
interfering now with your liberty; he is dictating how you shall
live; he is making distinctions not merely between the sexes, but
between the races.  You are feeling in your own persons what your
mothers felt when they were shut out, when they were shut up,
because they were women.  Now you are being shut out, you are being
shut up, because you are Jews, because you are democrats, because
of race, because of religion.  It is not a photograph that you look
upon any longer; there you go, trapesing along in the procession
yourselves.  And that makes a difference.  The whole iniquity of
dictatorship, whether in Oxford or Cambridge, in Whitehall or
Downing Street, against Jews or against women, in England, or in
Germany, in Italy or in Spain is now apparent to you.  But now we
are fighting together.  The daughters and sons of educated men are
fighting side by side.  That fact is so inspiring, even if no
celebration is possible, that if this one guinea could be
multiplied a million times all those guineas should be at your
service without any other conditions than those that you have
imposed upon yourself.  Take this one guinea then and use it to
assert 'the rights of all--all men and women--to the respect in
their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and
Liberty.'  Put this penny candle in the window of your new society,
and may we live to see the day when in the blaze of our common
freedom the words tyrant and dictator shall be burnt to ashes,
because the words tyrant and dictator shall be obsolete.

That request then for a guinea answered, and the cheque signed,
only one further request of yours remains to be considered--it is
that we should fill up a form and become members of your society.
On the face of it that seems a simple request, easily granted.  For
what can be simpler than to join the society to which this guinea
has just been contributed?  On the face of it, how easy, how
simple; but in the depths, how difficult, how complicated...
What possible doubts, what possible hesitations can those dots
stand for?  What reason or what emotion can make us hesitate to
become members of a society whose aims we approve, to whose funds
we have contributed?  It may be neither reason nor emotion, but
something more profound and fundamental than either.  It may be
difference.  Different we are, as facts have proved, both in sex
and in education.  And it is from that difference, as we have
already said, that our help can come, if help we can, to protect
liberty, to prevent war.  But if we sign this form which implies a
promise to become active members of your society, it would seem
that we must lose that difference and therefore sacrifice that
help.  To explain why this is so is not easy, even though the gift
of a guinea has made it possible (so we have boasted), to speak
freely without fear or flattery.  Let us then keep the form
unsigned on the table before us while we discuss, so far as we are
able, the reasons and the emotions which make us hesitate to sign
it.  For those reasons and emotions have their origin deep in the
darkness of ancestral memory; they have grown together in some
confusion; it is very difficult to untwist them in the light.

To begin with an elementary distinction: a society is a
conglomeration of people joined together for certain aims; while
you, who write in your own person with your own hand are single.
You the individual are a man whom we have reason to respect; a man
of the brotherhood, to which, as biography proves, many brothers
have belonged.  Thus Anne Clough, describing her brother, says:
'Arthur is my best friend and adviser... Arthur is the comfort
and joy of my life; it is for him, and from him, that I am incited
to seek after all that is lovely and of good report.'  To which
William Wordsworth, speaking of his sister but answering the other
as if one nightingale called to another in the forests of the past,
replies:


     The Blessing of my later years
     Was with me when a Boy:
     She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
     And humble cares, and delicate fears;
     A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
     And love, and thought, and joy.[12]


Such was, such perhaps still is, the relationship of many brothers
and sisters in private, as individuals.  They respect each other
and help each other and have aims in common.  Why then, if such can
be their private relationship, as biography and poetry prove,
should their public relationship, as law and history prove, be so
very different?  And here, since you are a lawyer, with a lawyer's
memory, it is not necessary to remind you of certain decrees of
English law from its first records to the year 1919 by way of
proving that the public, the society relationship of brother and
sister has been very different from the private.  The very word
'society' sets tolling in memory the dismal bells of a harsh music:
shall not, shall not, shall not.  You shall not learn; you shall
not earn; you shall not own; you shall not--such was the society
relationship of brother to sister for many centuries.  And though
it is possible, and to the optimistic credible, that in time a new
society may ring a carillon of splendid harmony, and your letter
heralds it, that day is far distant.  Inevitably we ask ourselves,
is there not something in the conglomeration of people into
societies that releases what is most selfish and violent, least
rational and humane in the individuals themselves?  Inevitably we
look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-
fitting form that distorts the truth; deforms the mind; fetters the
will.  Inevitably we look upon societies as conspiracies that sink
the private brother, whom many of us have reason to respect, and
inflate in his stead a monstrous male, loud of voice, hard of fist,
childishly intent upon scoring the floor of the earth with chalk
marks, within whose mystic boundaries human beings are penned,
rigidly, separately, artificially; where, daubed red and gold,
decorated like a savage with feathers he goes through mystic rites
and enjoys the dubious pleasures of power and dominion while we,
'his' women, are locked in the private house without share in the
many societies of which his society is composed.  For such reasons
compact as they are of many memories and emotions--for who shall
analyse the complexity of a mind that holds so deep a reservoir of
time past within it?--it seems both wrong for us rationally and
impossible for us emotionally to fill up your form and join your
society.  For by so doing we should merge our identity in yours;
follow and repeat and score still deeper the old worn ruts in which
society, like a gramophone whose needle has stuck, is grinding out
with intolerable unanimity 'Three hundred millions spent upon
arms.'  We should not give effect to a view which our own
experience of 'society' should have helped us to envisage.  Thus,
Sir, while we respect you as a private person and prove it by
giving you a guinea to spend as you choose, we believe that we can
help you most effectively by refusing to join your society; by
working for our common ends--justice and equality and liberty for
all men and women--outside your society, not within.

But this, you will say, if it means anything, can only mean that
you, the daughters of educated men, who have promised us your
positive help, refuse to join our society in order that you may
make another of your own.  And what sort of society do you propose
to found outside ours, but in cooperation with it, so that we may
both work together for our common ends?  That is a question which
you have every right to ask, and which we must try to answer in
order to justify our refusal to sign the form you send.  Let us
then draw rapidly in outline the kind of society which the
daughters of educated men might found and join outside your society
but in cooperation with its ends.  In the first place, this new
society, you will be relieved to learn, would have no honorary
treasurer, for it would need no funds.  It would have no office, no
committee, no secretary; it would call no meetings; it would hold
no conferences.  If name it must have, it could be called the
Outsiders Society.  That is not a resonant name, but it has the
advantage that it squares with facts--the facts of history, of law,
of biography; even, it may be, with the still hidden facts of our
still unknown psychology.  It would consist of educated men's
daughters working in their own class--how indeed can they work in
any other?[13]--and by their own methods for liberty, equality and
peace.  Their first duty, to which they would bind themselves not
by oath, for oaths and ceremonies have no part in a society which
must be anonymous and elastic before everything would be not to
fight with arms.  This is easy for them to observe, for in fact, as
the papers inform us, 'the Army Council have no intention of
opening recruiting for any women's corps.'[14]  The country ensures
it.  Next they would refuse in the event of war to make munitions
or nurse the wounded.  Since in the last war both these activities
were mainly discharged by the daughters of working men, the
pressure upon them here too would be slight, though probably
disagreeable.  On the other hand the next duty to which they would
pledge themselves is one of considerable difficulty, and calls not
only for courage and initiative, but for the special knowledge of
the educated man's daughter.  It is, briefly, not to incite their
brothers to fight, or to dissuade them, but to maintain an attitude
of complete indifference.  But the attitude expressed by the word
'indifference' is so complex and of such importance that it needs
even here further definition.  Indifference in the first place must
be given a firm footing upon fact.  As it is a fact that she cannot
understand what instinct compels him, what glory, what interest,
what manly satisfaction fighting provides for him--'without war
there would be no outlet for the manly qualities which fighting
develops'--as fighting thus is a sex characteristic which she
cannot share, the counterpart some claim of the maternal instinct
which he cannot share, so is it an instinct which she cannot judge.
The outsider therefore must leave him free to deal with this
instinct by himself, because liberty of opinion must be respected,
especially when it is based upon an instinct which is as foreign to
her as centuries of tradition and education can make it.[15]  This
is a fundamental and instinctive distinction upon which
indifference may be based.  But the outsider will make it her duty
not merely to base her indifference upon instinct, but upon reason.
When he says, as history proves that he has said, and may say
again, 'I am fighting to protect our country' and thus seeks to
rouse her patriotic emotion, she will ask herself, 'What does "our
country" mean to me an outsider?'  To decide this she will analyse
the meaning of patriotism in her own case.  She will inform herself
of the position of her sex and her class in the past.  She will
inform herself of the amount of land, wealth and property in the
possession of her own sex and class in the present--how much of
'England' in fact belongs to her.  From the same sources she will
inform herself of the legal protection which the law has given her
in the past and now gives her.  And if he adds that he is fighting
to protect her body, she will reflect upon the degree of physical
protection that she now enjoys when the words 'Air Raid Precaution'
are written on blank walls.  And if he says that he is fighting to
protect England from foreign rule, she will reflect that for her
there are no 'foreigners', since by law she becomes a foreigner if
she marries a foreigner.  And she will do her best to make this a
fact, not by forced fraternity, but by human sympathy.  All these
facts will convince her reason (to put it in a nutshell) that her
sex and class has very little to thank England for in the past; not
much to thank England for in the present; while the security of her
person in the future is highly dubious.  But probably she will have
imbibed, even from the governess, some romantic notion that
Englishmen, those fathers and grandfathers whom she sees marching
in the picture of history, are 'superior' to the men of other
countries.  This she will consider it her duty to check by
comparing French historians with English; German with French; the
testimony of the ruled--the Indians or the Irish, say--with the
claims made by their rulers.  Still some 'patriotic' emotion, some
ingrained belief in the intellectual superiority of her own country
over other countries may remain.  Then she will compare English
painting with French painting; English music with German music;
English literature with Greek literature, for translations abound.
When all these comparisons have been faithfully made by the use of
reason, the outsider will find herself in possession of very good
reasons for her indifference.  She will find that she has no good
reason to ask her brother to fight on her behalf to protect 'our'
country.  '"Our country,"' she will say, 'throughout the greater
part of its history has treated me as a slave; it has denied me
education or any share in its possessions.  "Our" country still
ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner.  "Our" country denies me
the means of protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very
large sum annually to protect me, and is so little able, even so,
to protect me that Air Raid precautions are written on the wall.
Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or "our"
country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us,
that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot
share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably
will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect
either myself or my country.  For,' the outsider will say, 'in
fact, as a woman, I have no country.  As a woman I want no country.
As a woman my country is the whole world.'  And if, when reason has
said its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of
England dropped into a child's ears by the cawing of rooks in an
elm tree, by the splash of waves on a beach, or by English voices
murmuring nursery rhymes, this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion
she will make serve her to give to England first what she desires
of peace and freedom for the whole world.

Such then will be the nature of her 'indifference' and from this
indifference certain actions must follow.  She will bind herself to
take no share in patriotic demonstrations; to assent to no form of
national self-praise; to make no part of any claque or audience
that encourages war; to absent herself from military displays,
tournaments, tattoos, prize-givings and all such ceremonies as
encourage the desire to impose 'our' civilization or 'our' dominion
upon other people.  The psychology of private life, moreover,
warrants the belief that this use of indifference by the daughters
of educated men would help materially to prevent war.  For
psychology would seem to show that it is far harder for human
beings to take action when other people are indifferent and allow
them complete freedom of action, than when their actions are made
the centre of excited emotion.  The small boy struts and trumpets
outside the window: implore him to stop; he goes on; say nothing;
he stops.  That the daughters of educated men then should give
their brothers neither the white feather of cowardice nor the red
feather of courage, but no feather at all; that they should shut
the bright eyes that rain influence, or let those eyes look
elsewhere when war is discussed--that is the duty to which
outsiders will train themselves in peace before the threat of death
inevitably makes reason powerless.

Such then are some of the methods by which the society, the
anonymous and secret Society of Outsiders would help you, Sir, to
prevent war and to ensure freedom.  Whatever value you may attach
to them you will agree that they are duties which your own sex
would find it more difficult to carry out than ours; and duties
moreover which are specially appropriate to the daughters of
educated men.  For they would need some acquaintance with the
psychology of educated men, and the minds of educated men are more
highly trained and their words subtler than those of working
men.[16]  There are other duties, of course--many have already been
outlined in the letters to the other honorary treasurers.  But at
the risk of some repetition let us roughly and rapidly repeat them,
so that they may form a basis for a society of outsiders to take
its stand upon.  First, they would bind themselves to earn their
own livings.  The importance of this as a method of ending war is
obvious; sufficient stress has already been laid upon the superior
cogency of an opinion based upon economic independence over an
opinion based upon no income at all or upon a spiritual right to an
income to make further proof unnecessary.  It follows that an
outsider must make it her business to press for a living wage in
all the professions now open to her sex; further that she must
create new professions in which she can earn the right to an
independent opinion.  Therefore she must bind herself to press for
a money wage for the unpaid worker in her own class--the daughters
and sisters of educated men who, as biographies have shown us, are
now paid on the truck system, with food, lodging and a pittance of
£40 a year.  But above all she must press for a wage to be paid by
the State legally to the mothers of educated men.  The importance
of this to our common fight is immeasurable; for it is the most
effective way in which we can ensure that the large and very
honourable class of married women shall have a mind and a will of
their own, with which, if his mind and will are good in her eyes,
to support her husband, if bad to resist him, in any case to cease
to be 'his woman' and to be her self.  You will agree, Sir, without
any aspersion upon the lady who bears your name, that to depend
upon her for your income would effect a most subtle and undesirable
change in your psychology.  Apart from that, this measure is of
such importance directly to yourselves, in your own fight for
liberty and equality and peace, that if any condition were to be
attached to the guinea it would be this: that you should provide a
wage to be paid by the State to those whose profession is marriage
and motherhood.  Consider, even at the risk of a digression, what
effect this would have upon the birth-rate, in the very class where
the birth-rate is falling, in the very class where births are
desirable--the educated class.  Just as the increase in the pay of
soldiers has resulted, the papers say, in additional recruits to
the force of arm-bearers, so the same inducement would serve to
recruit the child-bearing force, which we can hardly deny to be as
necessary and as honourable, but which, because of its poverty, and
its hardships, is now failing to attract recruits.  That method
might succeed where the one in use at present--abuse and ridicule--
has failed.  But the point which, at the risk of further
digression, the outsiders would press upon you is one that vitally
concerns your own lives as educated men and the honour and vigour
of your professions.  For if your wife were paid for her work, the
work of bearing and bringing up children, a real wage, a money
wage, so that it became an attractive profession instead of being
as it is now an unpaid profession, an unpensioned profession, and
therefore a precarious and dishonoured profession, your own slavery
would be lightened.[17]  No longer need you go to the office at
nine-thirty and stay there till six.  Work could be equally
distributed.  Patients could be sent to the patientless.  Briefs to
the briefless.  Articles could be left unwritten.  Culture would
thus be stimulated.  You could see the fruit trees flower in
spring.  You could share the prime of life with your children.  And
after that prime was over no longer need you be thrown from the
machine on to the scrap heap without any life left or interests
surviving to parade the environs of Bath or Cheltenham in the care
of some unfortunate slave.  No longer would you be the Saturday
caller, the albatross on the neck of society, the sympathy addict,
the deflated work slave calling for replenishment; or, as Herr
Hitler puts it, the hero requiring recreation, or, as Signor
Mussolini puts it, the wounded warrior requiring female dependants
to bandage his wounds.[18]  If the State paid your wife a living
wage for her work which, sacred though it is, can scarcely be
called more sacred than that of the clergyman, yet as his work is
paid without derogation so may hers be--if this step which is even
more essential to your freedom than to hers were taken the old mill
in which the professional man now grinds out his round, often so
wearily, with so little pleasure to himself or profit to his
profession, would be broken; the opportunity of freedom would be
yours; the most degrading of all servitudes, the intellectual
servitude, would be ended; the half-man might become whole.  But
since three hundred millions or so have to be spent upon the arm-
bearers, such expenditure is obviously, to use a convenient word
supplied by the politicians, 'impracticable' and it is time to
return to more feasible projects.

The outsiders then would bind themselves not only to earn their own
livings, but to earn them so expertly that their refusal to earn
them would be a matter of concern to the work master.  They would
bind themselves to obtain full knowledge of professional practices,
and to reveal any instance of tyranny or abuse in their
professions.  And they would bind themselves not to continue to
make money in any profession, but to cease all competition and to
practise their profession experimentally, in the interests of
research and for love of the work itself, when they had earned
enough to live upon.  Also they would bind themselves to remain
outside any profession hostile to freedom, such as the making or
the improvement of the weapons of war.  And they would bind
themselves to refuse to take office or honour from any society
which, while professing to respect liberty, restricts it, like the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge.  And they would consider it
their duty to investigate the claims of all public societies to
which, like the Church and the universities, they are forced to
contribute as taxpayers as carefully and fearlessly as they would
investigate the claims of private societies to which they
contribute voluntarily.  They would make it their business to
scrutinize the endowments of the schools and universities and the
objects upon which that money is spent.  As with the educational,
so with the religious profession.  By reading the New Testament in
the first place and next those divines and historians whose works
are all easily accessible to the daughters of educated men, they
would make it their business to have some knowledge of the
Christian religion and its history.  Further they would inform
themselves of the practice of that religion by attending Church
services, by analysing the spiritual and intellectual value of
sermons; by criticizing the opinions of men whose profession is
religion as freely as they would criticize the opinions of any
other body of men.  Thus they would be creative in their
activities, not merely critical.  By criticizing education they
would help to create a civilized society which protects culture and
intellectual liberty.  By criticizing religion they would attempt
to free the religious spirit from its present servitude and would
help, if need be, to create a new religion based it might well be
upon the New Testament, but, it might well be, very different from
the religion now erected upon that basis.  And in all this, and in
much more than we have time to particularize, they would be helped,
you will agree, by their position as outsiders, that freedom from
unreal loyalties, that freedom from interested motives which are at
present assured them by the State.

It would be easy to define in greater number and more exactly the
duties of those who belong to the Society of Outsiders, but not
profitable.  Elasticity is essential: and some degree of secrecy,
as will be shown later, is at present even more essential.  But the
description thus loosely and imperfectly given is enough to show
you, Sir, that the Society of Outsiders has the same ends as your
society--freedom, equality, peace; but that it seeks to achieve
them by the means that a different sex, a different tradition, a
different education, and the different values which result from
those differences have placed within our reach.  Broadly speaking,
the main distinction between us who are outside society and you who
are inside society must be that whereas you will make use of the
means provided by your position--leagues, conferences, campaigns,
great names, and all such public measures as your wealth and
political influence place within your reach--we, remaining outside,
will experiment not with public means in public but with private
means in private.  Those experiments will not be merely critical
but creative.  To take two obvious instances:--the outsiders will
dispense with pageantry not from any puritanical dislike of beauty.
On the contrary, it will be one of their aims to increase private
beauty; the beauty of spring, summer, autumn; the beauty of
flowers, silks, clothes; the beauty which brims not only every
field and wood but every barrow in Oxford Street; the scattered
beauty which needs only to be combined by artists in order to
become visible to all.  But they will dispense with the dictated,
regimented, official pageantry, in which only one sex takes an
active part--those ceremonies, for example, which depend upon the
deaths of kings, or their coronations to inspire them.  Again, they
will dispense with personal distinctions--medals, ribbons, badges,
hoods, gowns--not from any dislike of personal adornment, but
because of the obvious effect of such distinctions to constrict, to
stereotype and to destroy.  Here, as so often, the example of the
Fascist States is at hand to instruct us--for if we have no example
of what we wish to be, we have, what is perhaps equally valuable, a
daily and illuminating example of what we do not wish to be.  With
the example then, that they give us of the power of medals,
symbols, orders and even, it would seem, of decorated ink-pots[19]
to hypnotize the human mind it must be our aim not to submit
ourselves to such hypnotism.  We must extinguish the coarse glare
of advertisement and publicity, not merely because the limelight is
apt to be held in incompetent hands, but because of the
psychological effect of such illumination upon those who receive
it.  Consider next time you drive along a country road the attitude
of a rabbit caught in the glare of a head-lamp--its glazed eyes,
its rigid paws.  Is there not good reason to think without going
outside our own country, that the 'attitudes', the false and unreal
positions taken by the human form in England as well as in Germany,
are due to the limelight which paralyses the free action of the
human faculties and inhibits the human power to change and create
new wholes much as a strong head-lamp paralyses the little
creatures who run out of the darkness into its beams?  It is a
guess; guessing is dangerous; yet we have some reason to guide us
in the guess that ease and freedom, the power to change and the
power to grow, can only be preserved by obscurity; and that if we
wish to help the human mind to create, and to prevent it from
scoring the same rut repeatedly, we must do what we can to shroud
it in darkness.

But enough of guessing.  To return to facts--what chance is there,
you may ask, that such a Society of Outsiders without office,
meetings, leaders or any hierarchy, without so much as a form to be
filled up, or a secretary to be paid, can be brought into
existence, let alone work to any purpose?  Indeed it would have
been waste of time to write even so rough a definition of the
Outsiders' Society were it merely a bubble of words, a covert form
of sex or class glorification, serving, as so many such expressions
do, to relieve the writer's emotion, lay the blame elsewhere, and
then burst.  Happily there is a model in being, a model from which
the above sketch has been taken, furtively it is true, for the
model, far from sitting still to be painted, dodges and disappears.
That model then, the evidence that such a body, whether named or
unnamed, exists and works is provided not yet by history or
biography, for the outsiders have only had a positive existence for
twenty years--that is since the professions were opened to the
daughters of educated men.  But evidence of their existence is
provided by history and biography in the raw--by the newspapers
that is, sometimes openly in the lines, sometimes covertly between
them.  There, anyone who wishes to verify the existence of such a
body, can find innumerable proofs.  Many, it is obvious, are of
dubious value.  For example, the fact that an immense amount of
work is done by the daughters of educated men without pay or for
very little pay need not be taken as a proof that they are
experimenting of their own free will in the psychological value of
poverty.  Nor need the fact that many daughters of educated men do
not 'eat properly'[20] serve as a proof that they are experimenting
in the physical value of undernourishment.  Nor need the fact that
a very small proportion of women compared with men accept honours
be held to prove that they are experimenting in the virtues of
obscurity.  Many such experiments are forced experiments and
therefore of no positive value.  But others of a much more positive
kind are coming daily to the surface of the Press.  Let us examine
three only, in order that we may prove our statement that the
Society of Outsiders is in being.  The first is straightforward
enough.


Speaking at a bazaar last week at the Plumstead Common Baptist
Church the Mayoress (of Woolwich) said:  '...I myself would not
even do as much as darn a sock to help in a war.'  These remarks
are resented by the majority of the Woolwich public, who hold that
the Mayoress was, to say the least, rather tactless.  Some 12,000
Woolwich electors are employed in Woolwich Arsenal on armament
making.[21]


There is no need to comment upon the tactlessness of such a
statement made publicly, in such circumstances; but the courage can
scarcely fail to command our admiration, and the value of the
experiment, from a practical point of view, should other mayoresses
in other towns and other countries where the electors are employed
in armament-making follow suit may well be immeasurable.  At any
rate, we shall agree that the Mayoress of Woolwich, Mrs Kathleen
Rance, has made a courageous and effective experiment in the
prevention of war by not knitting socks.  For a second proof that
the outsiders are at work let us choose another example from the
daily paper, one that is less obvious, but still you will agree an
outsider's experiment, a very original experiment, and one that may
be of great value to the cause of peace.


Speaking of the work of the great voluntary associations for the
playing of certain games, Miss Clarke [Miss E. R. Clarke of the
Board of Education] referred to the women's organizations for
hockey, lacrosse, netball, and cricket, and pointed out that under
the rules there could be no cup or award of any kind to a
successful team.  The 'gates' for their matches might be a little
smaller than for the men's games, but their players played the game
for the love of it, and they seemed to be proving that cups and
awards are not necessary to stimulate interest for each year the
numbers of players steadily continued to increase.[22]


That, you will agree, is an extraordinarily interesting experiment,
one that may well bring about a psychological change of great value
in human nature, and a change that may be of real help in
preventing war.  It is further of interest because it is an
experiment that outsiders, owing to their comparative freedom from
certain inhibitions and persuasions, can carry out much more easily
than those who are necessarily exposed to such influences inside.
That statement is corroborated in a very interesting way by the
following quotation:


Official football circles here [Wellingborough, Northants] regard
with anxiety the growing popularity of girl's football.  A secret
meeting of the Northants Football Association's consultative
committee was held here last night to discuss the playing of a
girl's match on the Peterborough ground.  Members of the Committee
are reticent... One member, however, said today:  'The
Northants Football Association is to forbid women's football.  This
popularity of girls' football comes when many men's clubs in the
country are in a parlous state through lack of support.  Another
serious aspect is the possibility of grave injury to women
players.'[23]


There we have proof positive of those inhibitions and persuasions
which make it harder for your sex to experiment freely in altering
current values than for ours; and without spending time upon the
delicacies of psychological analysis even a hasty glance at the
reasons given by this Association for its decision will throw a
valuable light upon the reasons which lead other and even more
important associations to come to their decisions.  But to return
to the outsiders' experiments.  For our third example let us choose
what we may call an experiment in passivity.


A remarkable change in the attitude of young women to the Church
was discussed by Canon F. A. Barry, vicar of St Mary the Virgin
(the University Church), at Oxford last night... The task
before the Church, he said, was nothing less than to make
civilization moral, and this was a great cooperative task which
demanded all that Christians could bring to it.  It simply could
not be carried through by men alone.  For a century, or a couple of
centuries, women had predominated in the congregations in roughly
the ratio of 75 per cent to 25 per cent.  The whole situation was
now changing, and what the keen observer would notice in almost any
church in England was the paucity of young women... Among the
student population the young women were, on the whole, farther away
from the Church of England and the Christian faith than the young
men.[24]


That again is an experiment of very great interest.  It is, as we
have said, a passive experiment.  For while the first example was
an outspoken refusal to knit socks in order to discourage war, and
the second was an attempt to prove whether cups and awards are
necessary to stimulate interest in games, the third is an attempt
to discover what happens if the daughters of educated men absent
themselves from church.  Without being in itself more valuable than
the others, it is of more practical interest because it is
obviously the kind of experiment that great numbers of outsiders
can practise with very little difficulty or danger.  To absent
yourself--that is easier than to speak aloud at a bazaar, or to
draw up rules of an original kind for playing games.  Therefore it
is worth watching very carefully to see what effect the experiment
of absenting oneself has had--if any.  The results are positive and
they are encouraging.  There can be no doubt that the Church is
becoming concerned about the attitude to the Church of educated
men's daughters at the universities.  The report of the
Archbishops' Commission on the Ministry of Women is there to prove
it.  This document, which costs only one shilling and should be in
the hands of all educated men's daughters, points out that 'one
outstanding difference between men's colleges and women's colleges
is the absence in the latter of a chaplain.'  It reflects that 'It
is natural that in this period of their lives they [the students]
exercise to the full their critical faculties.'  It deplores the
fact that 'Very few women coming to the universities can now afford
to offer continuous voluntary service either in social or in
directly religious work.'  And it concludes that 'There are many
special spheres in which such services are particularly needed, and
the time has clearly come when the functions and position of women
within the Church require further determination.'[25]  Whether this
concern is due to the empty churches at Oxford, or whether the
voices of the 'older schoolgirls' at Isleworth expressing 'very
grave dissatisfaction at the way in which organized religion was
carried on'[26] have somehow penetrated to those august spheres
where their sex is not supposed to speak, or whether our
incorrigibly idealistic sex is at last beginning to take to heart
Bishop Gore's warning, 'Men do not value ministrations which are
gratuitous,'[27] and to express the opinion that a salary of £150 a
year--the highest that the Church allows her daughters as
deaconesses--is not enough--whatever the reason, considerable
uneasiness at the attitude of educated men's daughters is apparent;
and this experiment in passivity, whatever our belief in the value
of the Church of England as a spiritual agency, is highly
encouraging to us as outsiders.  For it seems to show that to be
passive is to be active; those also serve who remain outside.  By
making their absence felt their presence becomes desirable.  What
light this throws upon the power of outsiders to abolish or modify
other institutions of which they disapprove, whether public
dinners, public speeches, Lord Mayors' banquets and other obsolete
ceremonies are pervious to indifference and will yield to its
pressure, are questions, frivolous questions, that may well amuse
our leisure and stimulate our curiosity.  But that is not now the
object before us.  We have tried to prove to you, Sir, by giving
three different examples of three different kinds of experiment
that the Society of Outsiders is in being and at work.  When you
consider that these examples have all come to the surface of the
newspaper you will agree that they represent a far greater number
of private and submerged experiments of which there is no public
proof.  Also you will agree that they substantiate the model of the
society given above, and prove that it was no visionary sketch
drawn at random but based upon a real body working by different
means for the same ends that you have set before us in your own
society.  Keen observers, like Canon Barry, could, if they liked,
discover many more proofs that experiments are being made not only
in the empty churches of Oxford.  Mr Wells even might be led to
believe if he put his ear to the ground that a movement is going
forward, not altogether imperceptibly, among educated men's
daughters against the Nazi and the Fascist.  But it is essential
that the movement should escape the notice even of keen observers
and of famous novelists.

Secrecy is essential.  We must still hide what we are doing and
thinking even though what we are doing and thinking is for our
common cause.  The necessity for this, in certain circumstances, is
not hard to discover.  When salaries are low, as Whitaker proves
that they are, and jobs are hard to get and keep, as everybody
knows them to be, it is, 'to say the least, rather tactless,' as
the newspaper puts it, to criticize your master.  Still, in country
districts, as you yourself may be aware, farm labourers will not
vote Labour.  Economically, the educated man's daughter is much on
a level with the farm labourer.  But it is scarcely necessary for
us to waste time in searching out what reason it is that inspires
both his and her secrecy.  Fear is a powerful reason; those who are
economically dependent have strong reasons for fear.  We need
explore no further.  But here you may remind us of a certain
guinea, and draw our attention to the proud boast that our gift,
small though it was, had made it possible not merely to burn a
certain corrupt word, but to speak freely without fear or flattery.
The boast it seems had an element of brag in it.  Some fear, some
ancestral memory prophesying war, still remains, it seems.  There
are still subjects that educated people, when they are of different
sexes, even though financially independent, veil, or hint at in
guarded terms and then pass on.  You may have observed it in real
life; you may have detected it in biography.  Even when they meet
privately and talk, as we have boasted, about 'politics and people,
war and peace, barbarism and civilization', yet they evade and
conceal.  But it is so important to accustom ourselves to the
duties of free speech, for without private there can be no public
freedom, that we must try to uncover this fear and to face it.
What then can be the nature of the fear that still makes
concealment necessary between educated people and reduces our
boasted freedom to a farce?... Again there are three dots;
again they represent a gulf--of silence this time, of silence
inspired by fear.  And since we lack both the courage to explain it
and the skill, let us lower the veil of St Paul between us, in
other words take shelter behind an interpreter.  Happily we have
one at hand whose credentials are above suspicion.  It is none
other than the pamphlet from which quotation has already been made,
the report of the Archbishops' Commission on the Ministry of Women--
a document of the highest interest for many reasons.  For not only
does it throw light of a searching and scientific nature upon this
fear, but it gives us an opportunity to consider that profession
which, since it is the highest of all may be taken as the type of
all, the profession of religion, about which, purposely, very
little has yet been said.  And since it is the type of all it may
throw light upon the other professions about which something has
been said.  You will pardon us therefore if we pause here to
examine this report in some detail.

The Commission was appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York 'in order to examine any theological or other relevant
principles which have governed or ought to govern the Church in the
development of the Ministry of Women.'[28]  Now the profession of
religion, for our purposes the Church of England, though it seems
on the surface to resemble the others in certain respects--it
enjoys, Whitaker says, a large income, owns much property, and has
a hierarchy of officials drawing salaries and taking precedence one
of the other--yet ranks above all the professions.  The Archbishop
of Canterbury precedes the Lord High Chancellor; the Archbishop of
York precedes the Prime Minister.  And it is the highest of all the
professions because it is the profession of religion.  But what, we
may ask, is 'religion'?  What the Christian religion is has been
laid down once and for all by the founder of that religion in words
that can be read by all in a translation of singular beauty; and
whether or not we accept the interpretation that has been put on
them we cannot deny them to be words of the most profound meaning.
It can thus safely be said that whereas few people know what
medicine is, or what law is, everyone who owns a copy of the New
Testament knows what religion meant in the mind of its founder.
Therefore, when in the year 1935 the daughters of educated men said
that they wished to have the profession of religion opened to them,
the priests of that profession, who correspond roughly to the
doctors and barristers in the other professions, were forced not
merely to consult some statute or charter which reserves the right
to practise that profession professionally to the male sex; they
were forced to consult the New Testament.  They did so; and the
result, as the Commissioners point out, was that they found that
'the Gospels show us that our Lord regarded men and women alike as
members of the same spiritual kingdom, as children of God's family,
and as possessors of the same spiritual capacities...'  In proof
of this they quote:  'There is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal. iii, 28).  It would seem then that
the founder of Christianity believed that neither training nor sex
was needed for this profession.  He chose his disciples from
the working class from which he sprang himself.  The prime
qualification was some rare gift which in those early days was
bestowed capriciously upon carpenters and fishermen, and upon women
also.  As the Commission points out there can be no doubt that in
those early days there were prophetesses--women upon whom the
divine gift had descended.  Also they were allowed to preach.  St
Paul, for example, lays it down that women, when praying in public,
should be veiled.  'The implication is that if veiled a woman might
prophesy [i.e.  preach] and lead in prayer.'  How then can they be
excluded from the priesthood since they were thought fit by the
founder of the religion and by one of his apostles to preach?  That
was the question, and the Commission solved it by appealing not to
the mind of the founder, but to the mind of the Church.  That, of
course, involved a distinction.  For the mind of the Church had to
be interpreted by another mind, and that mind was St Paul's mind;
and St Paul, in interpreting that mind, changed his mind.  For
after summoning from the depths of the past certain venerable if
obscure figures--Lydia and Chloe, Euodia and Syntyche, Tryphoena
and Tryphosa and Persis, debating their status, and deciding what
was the difference between a prophetess and presbyteress, what the
standing of a deaconess in the pre-Nicene Church and what in the
post-Nicene Church, the Commissioners once more have recourse to St
Paul, and say:  'In any case it is clear that the author of the
Pastoral Epistles, be he St Paul or another, regarded woman as
being debarred on the ground of her sex from the position of an
official "teacher" in the Church, or from any office involving the
exercise of a governmental authority over a man' (1 Tim. ii, 12).
That, it may frankly be said, is not so satisfactory as it might
be; for we cannot altogether reconcile the ruling of St Paul, or
another, with the ruling of Christ himself who 'regarded men and
women alike as members of the same spiritual kingdom...and as
possessors of the same spiritual capacities.'  But it is futile to
quibble over the meaning of the words, when we are so soon in the
presence of facts.  Whatever Christ meant, or St Paul meant, the
fact was that in the fourth or fifth century the profession of
religion had become so highly organized that 'the deacon (unlike
the deaconess) may, "after serving unto well-pleasing the ministry
committed unto him", aspire to be appointed eventually to higher
offices in the Church; whereas for the deaconess the Church prays
simply that God "would grant unto her the Holy Spirit...that
she may worthily accomplish the work committed to her."'  In three
or four centuries, it appears, the prophet or prophetess whose
message was voluntary and untaught became extinct; and their places
were taken by the three orders of bishops, priests and deacons, who
are invariably men, and invariably, as Whitaker points out, paid
men, for when the Church became a profession its professors were
paid.  Thus the profession of religion seems to have been
originally much what the profession of literature is now.[29]  It
was originally open to anyone who had received the gift of
prophecy.  No training was needed; the professional requirements
were simple in the extreme--a voice and a market-place, a pen and
paper.  Emily Brontë, for instance, who wrote


     No coward soul is mine,
     No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere;
     I see Heaven's glories shine.
     And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

     O God within my breast,
     Almighty, ever-present Deity!
     Life--that in me has rest,
     As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!


though not worthy to be a priest in the Church of England, is the
spiritual descendant of some ancient prophetess, who prophesied
when prophecy was a voluntary and unpaid occupation.  But when the
Church became a profession, required special knowledge of its
prophets and paid them for imparting it, one sex remained inside;
the other was excluded.  'The deacons rose in dignity--partly no
doubt from their close association with the bishops--and become
subordinate ministers of worship and of the sacraments; but the
deaconess shared only in the preliminary stages of this evolution.'
How elementary that evolution has been is proved by the fact that
in England in 1938 the salary of an archbishop is £15,000; the
salary of a bishop is £10,000 and the salary of a dean is £3,000.
But the salary of a deaconess is £150; and as for the 'parish
worker', who 'is called upon to assist in almost every department
of parish life', whose 'work is exacting and often solitary...'
she is paid from £120 to £150 a year; nor is there anything to
surprise us in the statement that 'prayer needs to be the very
centre of her activities'.  Thus we might even go further than the
Commissioners and say that the evolution of the deaconess is not
merely 'elementary', it is positively stunted; for though she is
ordained, and 'ordination...conveys an indelible character, and
involves the obligation of lifelong service', she must remain
outside the Church; and rank beneath the humblest curate.  Such is
the decision of the Church.  For the Commission, having consulted
the mind and tradition of the Church, reported finally; 'While the
Commission as a whole would not give their positive assent to the
view that a woman is inherently incapable of receiving the grace of
Order, and consequently to admission to any of the three Orders, we
believe that the general mind of the Church is still in accord with
the continuous tradition of a male priesthood.'

By thus showing that the highest of all the professions has many
points of similarity with the other professions our interpreter,
you will admit, has thrown further light upon the soul or essence
of those professions.  We must now ask him to help us, if he will,
to analyse the nature of that fear which still, as we have
admitted, makes it impossible for us to speak freely as free people
should.  Here again he is of service.  Though identical in many
respects, one very profound difference between the religious
profession and other professions has been noted above: the Church
being a spiritual profession has to give spiritual and not merely
historical reasons for its actions; it has to consult the mind, not
the law.  Therefore when the daughters of educated men wished to
be admitted to the profession of the Church it seemed advisable to
the Commissioners to give psychological and not merely historical
reasons for their refusal to admit them.  They therefore called in
Professor Grensted, D. D., the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy
of the Christian Religion in the University of Oxford, and asked
him 'to summarize the relevant psychological and physiological
material', and to indicate 'the grounds for the opinions and
recommendations put forward by the Commission'.  Now psychology is
not theology; and the psychology of the sexes, as the Professor
insisted, and 'its bearing upon human conduct, is still a matter
for specialists...and...its interpretation remains
controversial, in many respects obscure.'  But he gave his evidence
for what it was worth, and it is evidence that throws so much light
upon the origin of the fear which we have admitted and deplored
that we can do no better than follow his words exactly.


It was represented [he said] in evidence before the Commission that
man has a natural precedence of woman.  This view, in the sense
intended, cannot be supported psychologically.  Psychologists fully
recognize the fact of male dominance, but this must not be confused
with male superiority, still less with any type of precedence which
could have a bearing upon questions as to the admissibility of one
sex rather than the other to Holy Orders.


The psychologist, therefore, can only throw light upon certain
facts.  And this was the first fact that he investigated.


It is clearly a fact of the very greatest practical importance that
strong feeling is aroused by any suggestion that women should be
admitted to the status and functions of the threefold Order of the
Ministry.  The evidence before the Commission went to show that
this feeling is predominantly hostile to such proposals... This
strength of feeling, conjoined with a wide variety of rational
explanations, is clear evidence of the presence of powerful and
widespread subconscious motive.  In the absence of detailed
analytical material, of which there seems to be no record in this
particular connection, it nevertheless remains clear that infantile
fixation plays a predominant part in determining the strong emotion
with which this whole subject is commonly approached.

The exact nature of this fixation must necessarily differ with
different individuals, and suggestions which can be made as to its
origin can only be general in character.  But whatever be the exact
value and interpretation of the material upon which theories of the
'Oedipus complex' and the 'castration complex' have been founded,
it is clear that the general acceptance of male dominance, and
still more of feminine inferiority, resting upon subconscious ideas
of woman as 'man manqué', has its background in infantile
conceptions of this type.  These commonly, and even usually,
survive in the adult, despite their irrationality, and betray their
presence, below the level of conscious thought, by the strength of
the emotions to which they give rise.  It is strongly in support of
this view that the admission of women to Holy Orders, and
especially to the ministry of the sanctuary, is so commonly
regarded as something shameful.  This sense of shame cannot be
regarded in any other light than as a non-rational sex-taboo.


Here we can take the Professor's word for it that he has sought,
and found, 'ample evidence of these unconscious forces', both in
Pagan religions and in the Old Testament, and so follow him to his
conclusion:


At the same time it must not be forgotten that the Christian
conception of the priesthood rests not upon these subconscious
emotional factors, but upon the institution of Christ.  It thus not
only fulfils but supersedes the priesthoods of paganism and the Old
Testament.  So far as psychology is concerned there is no
theoretical reason why this Christian priesthood should not be
exercised by women as well as by men and in exactly the same sense.
The difficulties which the psychologist foresees are emotional and
practical only.[30]


With that conclusion we may leave him.

The Commissioners, you will agree, have performed the delicate and
difficult task that we asked them to undertake.  They have acted as
interpreters between us.  They have given us an admirable example
of a profession in its purest state; and shown us how a profession
bases itself upon mind and tradition.  They have further explained
why it is that educated people when they are of different sexes do
not speak openly upon certain subjects.  They have shown why the
outsiders, even when there is no question of financial dependence,
may still be afraid to speak freely or to experiment openly.  And,
finally, in words of scientific precision, they have revealed to us
the nature of that fear.  For as Professor Grensted gave his
evidence, we, the daughters of educated men, seemed to be watching
a surgeon at work--an impartial and scientific operator, who, as he
dissected the human mind by human means laid bare for all to see
what cause, what root lies at the bottom of our fear.  It is an
egg.  Its scientific name is 'infantile fixation'.  We, being
unscientific, have named it wrongly.  An egg we called it; a germ.
We smelt it in the atmosphere; we detected its presence in
Whitehall, in the universities, in the Church.  Now undoubtedly the
Professor has defined it and described it so accurately that no
daughter of an educated man, however uneducated she may be, can
miscall it or misinterpret it in future.  Listen to the
description.  'Strong feeling is aroused by any suggestion that
women be admitted'--it matters not to which priesthood; the
priesthood of medicine or the priesthood of science or the
priesthood of the Church.  Strong feeling, she can corroborate the
Professor, is undoubtedly shown should she ask to be admitted.
'This strength of feeling is clear evidence of the presence of
powerful and subconscious motive.'  She will take the Professor's
word for that, and even supply him with some motives that have
escaped him.  Let us draw attention to two only.  There is the
money motive for excluding her, to put it plainly.  Are not
salaries motives now, whatever they may have been in the time of
Christ?  The archbishop has £15,000, the deaconess £150; and the
Church, so the Commissioners say, is poor.  To pay women more would
be to pay men less.  Secondly, is there not a motive, a
psychological motive, for excluding her, hidden beneath what the
Commissioners call a 'practical consideration'?  'At present a
married priest', they tell us, 'is able to fulfil the requirements
of the ordination service "to forsake and set aside all worldly
cares and studies" largely because his wife can undertake the care
of the household and the family,...'[31]  To be able to set aside
all worldly cares and studies and lay them upon another person is a
motive, to some of great attractive force; for some undoubtedly
wish to withdraw and study, as theology with its refinements, and
scholarship with its subtleties, prove; to others, it is true, the
motive is a bad motive, a vicious motive, the cause of that
separation between the Church and the people; between literature
and the people; between the husband and the wife which has had its
part in putting the whole of our Commonwealth out of gear.  But
whatever the powerful and subconscious motives may be that lie
behind the exclusion of women from the priesthoods, and plainly we
cannot count them, let alone dig to the roots of them here, the
educated man's daughter can testify from her own experience that
they 'commonly, and even usually, survive in the adult and betray
their presence, below the level of conscious thought, by the
strength of the emotions to which they give rise.'  And you will
agree that to oppose strong emotion needs courage; and that when
courage fails, silence and evasion are likely to manifest
themselves.

But now that the interpreters have performed their task, it is time
for us to raise the veil of St Paul and to attempt, face to face, a
rough and clumsy analysis of that fear and of the anger which
causes that fear; for they may have some bearing upon the question
you put us, how we can help you to prevent war.  Let us suppose,
then, that in the course of that bi-sexual private conversation
about politics and people, war and peace, barbarism and
civilization, some question has cropped up, about admitting, shall
we say, the daughters of educated men to the Church or the Stock
Exchange or the diplomatic service.  The question is adumbrated
merely; but we on our side of the table become aware at once of
some 'strong emotion' on your side 'arising from some motive below
the level of conscious thought' by the ringing of an alarm bell
within us; a confused but tumultuous clamour:  You shall not, shall
not, shall not... The physical symptoms are unmistakable.
Nerves erect themselves; fingers automatically tighten upon spoon
or cigarette; a glance at the private psychometer shows that the
emotional temperature has risen from ten to twenty degrees above
normal.  Intellectually, there is a strong desire either to be
silent; or to change the conversation; to drag in, for example,
some old family servant, called Crosby, perhaps, whose dog Rover
has died...and so evade the issue and lower the temperature.

But what analysis can we attempt of the emotions on the other side
of the table--your side?  Often, to be candid, while we are talking
about Crosby, we are asking questions--hence a certain flatness in
the dialogue--about you.  What are the powerful and subconscious
motives that are raising the hackles on your side of the table?  Is
the old savage who has killed a bison asking the other old savage
to admire his prowess?  Is the tired professional man demanding
sympathy and resenting competition?  Is the patriach calling for
the siren?  Is dominance craving for submission?  And, most
persistent and difficult of all the questions that our silence
covers, what possible satisfaction can dominance give to the
dominator?[32]  Now, since Professor Grensted has said that the
psychology of the sexes is 'still a matter for specialists', while
'its interpretation remains controversial and in many respects
obscure', it would be politic perhaps to leave these questions to
be answered by specialists.  But since, on the other hand, if
common men and women are to be free they must learn to speak
freely, we cannot leave the psychology of the sexes to the charge
of specialists.  There are two good reasons why we must try to
analyse both our fear and your anger; first, because such fear and
anger prevent real freedom in the private house; second, because
such fear and anger may prevent real freedom in the public world:
they may have a positive share in causing war.  Let us then grope
our way amateurishly enough among these very ancient and obscure
emotions which we have known ever since the time of Antigone and
Ismene and Creon at least; which St Paul himself seems to have
felt; but which the Professors have only lately brought to the
surface and named 'infantile fixation', 'Oedipus complex', and the
rest.  We must try, however feebly, to analyse those emotions since
you have asked us to help you in any way we can to protect liberty
and to prevent war.

Let us then examine this 'infantile fixation', for such it seems is
the proper name, in order that we may connect it with the question
you have put to us.  Once more, since we are generalists not
specialists, we must rely upon such evidence as we can collect from
history, biography, and from the daily paper--the only evidence
that is available to the daughters of educated men.  We will take
our first example of infantile fixation from biography, and once
more we will have recourse to Victorian biography because it is
only in the Victorian age that biography becomes rich and
representative.  Now there are so many cases of infantile fixation
as defined by Professor Grensted in Victorian biography that we
scarcely know which to choose.  The case of Mr Barrett of Wimpole
Street is, perhaps, the most famous and the best authenticated.
Indeed, it is so famous that the facts scarcely bear repetition.
We all know the story of the father who would allow neither sons
nor daughters to marry; we all know in greatest detail how his
daughter Elizabeth was forced to conceal her lover from her father;
how she fled with her lover from the house in Wimpole Street; and
how her father never forgave her for that act of disobedience.  We
shall agree that Mr Barrett's emotions were strong in the extreme;
and their strength makes it obvious that they had their origin in
some dark place below the level of conscious thought.  That is a
typical, a classical case of infantile fixation which we can all
bear in mind.  But there are others less famous which a little
investigation will bring to the surface and show to be of the same
nature.  There is the case of the Rev. Patrick Brontë.  The Rev.
Arthur Nicholls was in love with his daughter, Charlotte; 'What his
words were,' she wrote, when Mr Nicholls proposed to her, 'you can
imagine; his manner you can hardly realize nor can I forget it...
I asked if he had spoken to Papa.  He said he dared not.'  Why
did he dare not?  He was strong and young and passionately in love;
the father was old.  The reason is immediately apparent.  'He [the
Rev. Patrick Brontë] always disapproved of marriages, and
constantly talked against them.  But he more than disapproved this
time; he could not bear the idea of this attachment of Mr Nicholls
to his daughter.  Fearing the consequences...she made haste to
give her father a promise that, on the morrow, Mr Nicholls should
have a distinct refusal.'[33]  Mr Nicholls left Haworth; Charlotte
remained with her father.  Her married life--it was to be a short
one--was shortened still further by her father's wish.

For a third example of infantile fixation let us choose one that is
less simple, but for that reason more illuminating.  There is the
case of Mr Jex-Blake.  Here we have the case of a father who is not
confronted with his daughter's marriage but with his daughter's
wish to earn her living.  That wish also would seem to have aroused
in the father a very strong emotion and an emotion which also seems
to have its origin in the levels below conscious thought.  Again
with your leave we will call it a case of infantile fixation.  The
daughter, Sophia, was offered a small sum for teaching mathematics;
and she asked her father's permission to take it.  That permission
was instantly and heatedly refused.  'Dearest, I have only this
moment heard that you contemplate being paid for the tutorship.  It
would be quite beneath you, darling, and I CANNOT CONSENT to it.'
[The italics are the father's.]  'Take the post as one of honour
and usefulness, and I shall be glad... But to be PAID for the
work would be to alter the thing COMPLETELY, and would lower you
sadly in the eyes of almost everybody.'  That is a very interesting
statement.  Sophia, indeed, was led to argue the matter.  Why was
it beneath her, she asked, why should it lower her?  Taking money
for work did not lower Tom in anybody's eyes.  That, Mr Jex-Blake
explained, was quite a different matter; Tom was a man; Tom 'feels
bound as a man...to support his wife and family'; Tom had
therefore taken 'the PLAIN PATH of duty'.  Still Sophia was not
satisfied.  She argued--not only was she poor and wanted the money;
but also she felt strongly 'the honest, and I believe perfectly
justifiable pride of earning'.  Thus pressed Mr Jex-Blake at last
gave, under a semi-transparent cover, the real reason why he
objected to her taking money.  He offered to give her the money
himself if she would refuse to take it from the College.  It was
plain, therefore, that he did not object to her taking money: what
he objected to was her taking money from another man.  The curious
nature of his proposal did not escape Sophia's scrutiny.  'In that
case,' she said, 'I must say to the Dean, not, "I am willing to
work without payment," but "My Father prefers that I should receive
payment from HIM, not from the College," and I think the Dean would
think us both ridiculous, or at least foolish.'  Whatever
interpretation the Dean might have put upon Mr Jex-Blake's
behaviour, we can have no doubt what emotion was at the root of it.
He wished to keep his daughter in his own power.  If she took money
from him she remained in his power; if she took it from another man
not only was she becoming independent of Mr Jex-Blake, she was
becoming dependent upon another man.  That he wished her to depend
upon him, and felt obscurely that this desirable dependence could
only be secured by financial dependence is proved indirectly by
another of his veiled statements.  'If you married tomorrow to my
liking--and I don't believe you would ever marry otherwise--I
should give you a good fortune.'[34]  If she became a wage-earner,
she could dispense with the fortune and marry whom she liked.  The
case of Mr Jex-Blake is very easily diagnosed, but it is a very
important case because it is a normal case, a typical case.  Mr
Jex-Blake was no monster of Wimpole Street; he was an ordinary
father; he was doing what thousands of other Victorian fathers
whose cases remain unpublished were doing daily.  It is a case,
therefore, that explains much that lies at the root of Victorian
psychology--that psychology of the sexes which is still, Professor
Grensted tells us, so obscure.  The case of Mr Jex-Blake shows that
the daughter must not on any account be allowed to make money
because if she makes money she will be independent of her father
and free to marry any man she chooses.  Therefore the daughter's
desire to earn her living rouses two different forms of jealousy.
Each is strong separately; together they are very strong.  It is
further significant that in order to justify this very strong
emotion which has its origin below the levels of conscious thought
Mr Jex-Blake had recourse to one of the commonest of all evasions;
the argument which is not an argument but an appeal to the
emotions.  He appealed to the very deep, ancient and complex
emotion which we may, as amateurs, call the womanhood emotion.  To
take money was beneath her he said; if she took money she would
lower herself in the eyes of almost everybody.  Tom being a man
would not be lowered; it was her sex that made the difference.  He
appealed to her womanhood.

Whenever a man makes that appeal to a woman he rouses in her, it is
safe to say, a conflict of emotions of a very deep and primitive
kind which it is extremely difficult for her to analyse or to
reconcile.  It may serve to transmit the feeling if we compare it
with the confused conflict of manhood emotions that is roused in
you, Sir, should a woman hand you a white feather.[35]  It is
interesting to see how Sophia, in the year 1859, tried to deal with
this emotion.  Her first instinct was to attack the most obvious
form of womanhood, that which lay uppermost in her consciousness
and seemed to be responsible for her father's attitude--her
ladyhood.  Like other educated men's daughters Sophia Jex-Blake was
what is called 'a lady'.  It was the lady who could not earn money;
therefore the lady must be killed.  'Do you honestly, father,
think,' she asked, 'any lady lowered by the mere act of receiving
money?  Did you think the less of Mrs Teed because you paid her?'
Then, as if aware that Mrs Teed, being a governess, was not on a
par with herself who came of an upper middle-class family, 'whose
lineage will be found in Burke's Landed Gentry', she quickly called
in to help her to kill the lady 'Mary Jane Evans...one of the
proudest families of our relations', and then Miss Wodehouse,
'whose family is better and older than mine'--they both thought her
right in wishing to earn money.  And not only did Miss Wodehouse
think her right in wishing to earn money; Miss Wodehouse 'showed
she agreed with my opinions by her actions.  She sees no meanness
in earning, but in those that think it mean.  When accepting
Maurice's school, she said to him, most nobly, I think, "If you
think it better that I should work as a paid mistress, I will take
any salary you please; if not, I am willing to do the work freely
and for nothing".'  The lady, sometimes, was a noble lady; and that
lady it was hard to kill; but killed she must be, as Sophia
realized, if Sophia were to enter that Paradise where 'lots of
girls walk about London when and where they please,' that 'Elysium
upon earth', which is (or was), Queen's College, Harley Street,
where the daughters of educated men enjoy the happiness not of
ladies 'but of Queens--Work and independence!'[36]  Thus Sophia's
first instinct was to kill the lady;[37] but when the lady was
killed the woman still remained.  We can see her, concealing and
excusing the disease of infantile fixation, more clearly in the
other two cases.  It was the woman, the human being whose sex made
it her sacred duty to sacrifice herself to the father, whom
Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett had to kill.  If it was
difficult to kill the lady, it was even more difficult to kill the
woman.  Charlotte found it at first almost impossible.  She refused
her lover.  '...thus thoughtfully for her father, and
unselfishly for herself [she] put aside all consideration of how
she should reply, excepting as he wished.'  She loved Arthur
Nicholls; but she refused him.  '...she held herself simply
passive, as far as words and actions went, while she suffered acute
pain from the strong expressions which her father used in speaking
of Mr Nicholls.'  She waited; she suffered; until 'the great
conqueror Time', as Mrs Gaskell puts it, 'achieved his victory over
strong prejudice and human resolve.'  Her father consented.  The
great conqueror, however, had met his match in Mr Barrett;
Elizabeth Barrett waited; Elizabeth suffered; at last Elizabeth
fled.

The extreme force of the emotions to which the infantile fixation
gives rise is proved by these three cases.  It is remarkable, we
may agree.  It was a force that could quell not only Charlotte
Brontë but Arthur Nicholls; not only Elizabeth Barrett but Robert
Browning.  It was a force thus that could do battle with the
strongest of human passions--the love of men and women; and could
compel the most brilliant and the boldest of Victorian sons and
daughters to quail before it; to cheat the father, to deceive the
father, and then to fly from the father.  But to what did it owe
this amazing force?  Partly as these cases make clear, to the fact
that the infantile fixation was protected by society.  Nature, law
and property were all ready to excuse and conceal it.  It was easy
for Mr Barrett, Mr Jex-Blake and the Rev. Patrick Brontë to hide
the real nature of their emotions from themselves.  If they wished
that their daughter should stay at home, society agreed that they
were right.  If the daughter protested, then nature came to their
help.  A daughter who left her father was an unnatural daughter;
her womanhood was suspect.  Should she persist further, then law
came to his help.  A daughter who left her father had no means of
supporting herself.  The lawful professions were shut to her.
Finally, if she earned money in the one profession that was open to
her, the oldest profession of all, she unsexed herself.  There can
be no question--the infantile fixation is powerful, even when a
mother is infected.  But when the father is infected it has a
threefold power; he has nature to protect him, law to protect him;
and property to protect him.  Thus protected it was perfectly
possible for the Rev. Patrick Brontë to cause 'acute pain' to his
daughter Charlotte for several months, and to steal several months
of her short married happiness without incurring any censure from
the society in which he practised the profession of a priest of the
Church of England; though had he tortured a dog, or stolen a watch,
that same society would have unfrocked him and cast him forth.
Society it seems was a father, and afflicted with the infantile
fixation too.

Since society protected and indeed excused the victims of the
infantile fixation in the nineteenth century, it is not surprising
that the disease, though unnamed, was rampant.  Whatever biography
we open we find almost always the familiar symptoms--the father is
opposed to his daughter's marriage; the father is opposed to his
daughter's earning her living.  Her wish either to marry, or to
earn her living, rouses strong emotion in him; and he gives the
same excuses for that strong emotion; the lady will debase her
ladyhood; the daughter will outrage her womanhood.  But now and
again, very rarely, we find a father who was completely immune from
the disease.  The results are then extremely interesting.  There is
the case of Mr Leigh Smith.[38]  This gentleman was contemporary
with Mr Jex-Blake, and came of the same social caste.  He, too, had
property in Sussex; he, too, had horses and carriages; and he, too,
had children.  But there the resemblance ends.  Mr Leigh Smith was
devoted to his children; he objected to schools; he kept his
children at home.  It would be interesting to discuss Mr Leigh
Smith's educational methods; how he had masters to teach them; how,
in a large carriage built like an omnibus, he took them with him on
long journeys yearly all over England.  But like so many
experimentalists, Mr Leigh Smith remains obscure; and we must
content ourselves with the fact that he 'held the unusual opinion
that daughters should have an equal provision with sons.'  So
completely immune was he from the infantile fixation that 'he did
not adopt the ordinary plan of paying his daughter's bills and
giving them an occasional present, but when Barbara came of age in
1848 he gave her an allowance of £300 a year.'  The results of that
immunity from the infantile fixation were remarkable.  For
'treating her money as a power to do good, one of the first uses to
which Barbara put it was educational.'  She founded a school; a
school that was open not only to different sexes and different
classes, but to different creeds; Roman Catholics, Jews and 'pupils
from families of advanced free thought' were received in it.  'It
was a most unusual school,' an outsiders' school.  But that was not
all that she attempted upon three hundred a year.  One thing led to
another.  A friend, with her help, started a cooperative evening
class for ladies 'for drawing from an undraped model'.  In 1858
only one life class in London was open to ladies.  And then a
petition was got up to the Royal Academy; its schools were
actually, though as so often happens only nominally, opened to
women in 1861;[39] next Barbara went into the question of the laws
concerning women; so that actually in 1871 married women were
allowed to own their property; and finally she helped Miss Davies
to found Girton.  When we reflect what one father who was immune
from infantile fixation could do by allowing one daughter £300 a
year we need not wonder that most fathers firmly refused to allow
their daughters more than £40 a year with bed and board thrown in.

The infantile fixation in the fathers then was, it is clear, a
strong force, and all the stronger because it was a concealed
force.  But the fathers were met, as the nineteenth century drew
on, by a force which had become so strong in its turn that it is
much to be hoped that the psychologists will find some name for it.
The old names as we have seen are futile and false.  'Feminism', we
have had to destroy.  'The emancipation of women' is equally
inexpressive and corrupt.  To say that the daughters were inspired
prematurely by the principles of anti-Fascism is merely to repeat
the fashionable and hideous jargon of the moment.  To call them
champions of intellectual liberty and culture is to cloud the air
with the dust of lecture halls and the damp dowdiness of public
meetings.  Moreover, none of these tags and labels express the real
emotions that inspired the daughters' opposition to the infantile
fixation of the fathers, because, as biography shows, that force
had behind it many different emotions, and many that were
contradictory.  Tears were behind it, of course--tears, bitter
tears: the tears of those whose desire for knowledge was
frustrated.  One daughter longed to learn chemistry; the books at
home only taught her alchemy.  She 'cried bitterly at not being
taught things'.  Also the desire for an open and rational love was
behind it.  Again there were tears--angry tears.  'She flung
herself on the bed in tears... "Oh," she said, "Harry is on the
roof."  "Who's Harry?" said I; "which roof?  Why?"  "Oh, don't be
silly," she said; "he had to go."'[40]  But again the desire not to
love, to lead a rational existence without love, was behind it.  'I
make the confession humbly...I know nothing myself of love,'[41]
wrote one of them.  An odd confession from one of the class whose
only profession for so many centuries had been marriage; but
significant.  Others wanted to travel; to explore Africa; to dig in
Greece and Palestine.  Some wanted to learn music, not to tinkle
domestic airs, but to compose--operas, symphonies, quartets.
Others wanted to paint, not ivy-clad cottages, but naked bodies.
They all wanted--but what one word can sum up the variety of the
things that they wanted, and had wanted, consciously or
subconsciously, for so long?  Josephine Butler's label--Justice,
Equality, Liberty--is a fine one; but it is only a label, and in
our age of innumerable labels, of multi-coloured labels, we have
become suspicious of labels; they kill and constrict.  Nor does the
old word 'freedom' serve, for it was not freedom in the sense of
licence that they wanted; they wanted, like Antigone, not to break
the laws, but to find the law.[42]  Ignorant as we are of human
motives and ill supplied with words, let us then admit that no one
word expresses the force which in the nineteenth century opposed
itself to the force of the fathers.  All we can safely say about
that force was that it was a force of tremendous power.  It forced
open the doors of the private house.  It opened Bond Street and
Piccadilly; it opened cricket grounds and football grounds; it
shrivelled flounces and stays; it made the oldest profession in the
world (but Whitaker supplies no figures) unprofitable.  In fifty
years, in short, that force made the life lived by Lady Lovelace
and Gertrude Bell unlivable, and almost incredible.  The fathers,
who had triumphed over the strongest emotions of strong men, had to
yield.

If that full stop were the end of the story, the final slam of the
door, we could turn at once to your letter, Sir, and to the form
which you have asked us to fill up.  But it was not the end; it was
the beginning.  Indeed though we have used the past, we shall soon
find ourselves using the present tense.  The fathers in private, it
is true, yielded; but the fathers in public, massed together in
societies, in professions, were even more subject to the fatal
disease than the fathers in private.  The disease had acquired a
motive, had connected itself with a right, a conception, which made
it still more virulent outside the house than within.  The desire
to support wife and children--what motive could be more powerful,
or deeply rooted?  For it was connected with manhood itself--a man
who could not support his family failed in his own conception of
manliness.  And was not that conception as deep in him as the
conception of womanhood in his daughter?  It was those motives,
those rights and conceptions that were now challenged.  To protect
them, and from women, gave, and gives, rise it can scarcely be
doubted to an emotion perhaps below the level of conscious thought
but certainly of the utmost violence.  The infantile fixation
develops, directly the priest's right to practise his profession is
challenged, to an aggravated and exacerbated emotion to which the
name sex taboo is scientifically applied.  Take two instances; one
private, the other public.  A scholar has 'to mark his disapproval
of the admission of women to his university by refusing to enter
his beloved college or city.'[43]  A hospital has to decline an
offer to endow a scholarship because it is made by a woman on
behalf of women.[44]  Can we doubt that both actions are inspired by
that sense of shame which, as Professor Grensted says 'cannot be
regarded in any other light than as a non-rational sex taboo?'  But
since the emotion itself had increased in strength it became
necessary to invoke the help of stronger allies to excuse and
conceal it.  Nature was called in; Nature it was claimed who is not
only omniscient but unchanging, had made the brain of woman of the
wrong shape or size.  'Anyone', writes Bertrand Russell, 'who
desires amusement may be advised to look up the tergiversations of
eminent craniologists in their attempts to prove from brain
measurements that women are stupider than men.'[45]  Science, it
would seem, is not sexless; she is a man, a father, and infected
too.  Science, thus infected, produced measurements to order: the
brain was too small to be examined.  Many years were spent waiting
before the sacred gates of the universities and hospitals for
permission to have the brains that the professors said that Nature
had made incapable of passing examinations examined.  When at last
permission was granted the examinations were passed.  A long and
dreary list of those barren if necessary triumphs lies presumably
along with other broken records[46] in college archives, and
harassed head mistresses still consult them, it is said, when
desiring official proof of impeccable mediocrity.  Still Nature
held out.  The brain that could pass examinations was not the
creative brain; the brain that can bear responibility and earn the
higher salaries.  It was a practical brain, a pettifogging brain, a
brain fitted for routine work under the command of a superior.  And
since the professions were shut, it was undeniable--the daughters
had not ruled Empires, commanded fleets, or led armies to victory;
only a few trivial books testified to their professional ability,
for literature was the only profession that had been open to them.
And, moreover, whatever the brain might do when the professions
were opened to it, the body remained.  Nature, the priests said, in
her infinite wisdom, had laid down the unalterable law that man is
the creator.  He enjoys; she only passively endures.  Pain was more
beneficial than pleasure to the body that endures.  'The views of
medical men on pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation were until
fairly recently', Bertrand Russell writes, 'impregnated with
sadism.  It required, for example, more evidence to persuade them
that anaesthetics may be used in childbirth than it would have
required to persuade them of the opposite.'  So science argued, so
the professors agreed.  And when at last the daughters interposed,
But are not brain and body affected by training?  Does not the wild
rabbit differ from the rabbit in the hutch?  And must we not, and
do we not change this unalterable nature?  By setting a match to a
fire frost is defied; Nature's decree of death is postponed.  And
the breakfast egg, they persisted, is it all the work of the cock?
Without yolk, without white, how far would your breakfasts, oh
priests and professors, be fertile?  Then the priests and
professors in solemn unison intoned:  But childbirth itself, that
burden you cannot deny, is laid upon woman alone.  Nor could they
deny it, nor wish to renounce it.  Still they declared, consulting
the statistics in books, the time occupied by woman in childbirth
is under modern conditions--remember we are in the twentieth
century now--only a fraction.[47]  Did that fraction incapacitate us
from working in Whitehall, in fields and factories, when our
country was in danger?  To which the fathers replied:  The war is
over; we are in England now.

And if, Sir, pausing in England now, we turn on the wireless of the
daily press we shall hear what answer the fathers who are infected
with infantile fixation now are making to those questions now.
'Homes are the real places of the women... Let them go back to
their homes... The Government should give work to men...  A
strong protest is to be made by the Ministry of Labour...
Women must not rule over men... There are two worlds, one for
women, the other for men... Let them learn to cook our dinners
... Women have failed... They have failed... They have
failed...'

Even now the clamour, the uproar that infantile fixation is making
even here is such that we can hardly hear ourselves speak; it takes
the words out of our mouths; it makes us say what we have not said.
As we listen to the voices we seem to hear an infant crying in the
night, the black night that now covers Europe, and with no language
but a cry, Ay, ay, ay, ay... But it is not a new cry, it is a
very old cry.  Let us shut off the wireless and listen to the past.
We are in Greece now; Christ has not been born yet, nor St Paul
either.  But listen:

'Whomsoever the city may appoint, that man must be obeyed, in
little things and great, in just things and unjust...
disobedience is the worst of evils... We must support the cause
of order, and in no wise suffer a woman to worst us... They
must be women, and not range at large.  Servants, take them
within.'  That is the voice of Creon, the dictator.  To whom
Antigone, who was to have been his daughter, answered, 'Not such
are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods
below.'  But she had neither capital nor force behind her.  And
Creon said:  'I will take her where the path is loneliest, and
hide her, living, in a rocky vault.'  And he shut her not in
Holloway or in a concentration camp, but in a tomb.  And Creon we
read brought ruin on his house, and scattered the land with the
bodies of the dead.  It seems, Sir, as we listen to the voices of
the past, as if we were looking at the photograph again, at the
picture of dead bodies and ruined houses that the Spanish
Government sends us almost weekly.  Things repeat themselves it
seems.  Pictures and voices are the same today as they were 2,000
years ago.

Such then is the conclusion to which our inquiry into the nature of
fear has brought us--the fear which forbids freedom in the private
house.  That fear, small, insignificant and private as it is, is
connected with the other fear, the public fear, which is neither
small nor insignificant, the fear which has led you to ask us to
help you to prevent war.  Otherwise we should not be looking at the
picture again.  But it is not the same picture that caused us at
the beginning of this letter to feel the same emotions--you called
them 'horror and disgust'; we called them horror and disgust.  For
as this letter has gone on, adding fact to fact, another picture
has imposed itself upon the foreground.  It is the figure of a man;
some say, others deny, that he is Man himself,[48] the quintessence
of virility, the perfect type of which all the others are imperfect
adumbrations.  He is a man certainly.  His eyes are glazed; his
eyes glare.  His body, which is braced in an unnatural position, is
tightly cased in a uniform.  Upon the breast of that uniform are
sewn several medals and other mystic symbols.  His hand is upon a
sword.  He is called in German and Italian Führer or Duce; in our
own language Tyrant or Dictator.  And behind him lie ruined houses
and dead bodies--men, women and children.  But we have not laid
that picture before you in order to excite once more the sterile
emotion of hate.  On the contrary it is in order to release other
emotions such as the human figure, even thus crudely in a coloured
photograph, arouses in us who are human beings.  For it suggests a
connection and for us a very important connection.  It suggests
that the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected;
that the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and
servilities of the other.  But the human figure even in a
photograph suggests other and more complex emotions.  It suggests
that we cannot dissociate ourselves from that figure but are
ourselves that figure.  It suggests that we are not passive
spectators doomed to unresisting obedience but by our thoughts and
actions can ourselves change that figure.  A common interest unites
us; it is one world, one life.  How essential it is that we should
realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove.  For
such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public
abstractions forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity
of our private emotions forget the public world.  Both houses will
be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the
spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.  But with your
letter before us we have reason to hope.  For by asking our help
you recognize that connection; and by reading your words we are
reminded of other connections that lie far deeper than the facts on
the surface.  Even here, even now your letter tempts us to shut our
ears to these little facts, these trivial details, to listen not to
the bark of the guns and the bray of the gramophones but to the
voices of the poets, answering each other, assuring us of a unity
that rubs out divisions as if they were chalk marks only; to
discuss with you the capacity of the human spirit to overflow
boundaries and make unity out of multiplicity.  But that would be
to dream--to dream the recurring dream that has haunted the human
mind since the beginning of time; the dream of peace, the dream of
freedom.  But, with the sound of the guns in your ears you have not
asked us to dream.  You have not asked us what peace is; you have
asked us how to prevent war.  Let us then leave it to the poets to
tell us what the dream is; and fix our eyes upon the photograph
again: the fact.  Whatever the verdict of others may be upon the
man in uniform--and opinions differ--there is your letter to prove
that to you the picture is the picture of evil.  And though we look
upon that picture from different angles our conclusion is the same
as yours--it is evil.  We are both determined to do what we can to
destroy the evil which that picture represents, you by your
methods, we by ours.  And since we are different, our help must be
different.  What ours can be we have tried to show--how
imperfectly, how superficially there is no need to say.[49]  But as
a result the answer to your question must be that we can best help
you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your
methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.  We can
best help you to prevent war not by joining your society but by
remaining outside your society but in cooperation with its aim.
That aim is the same for us both.  It is to assert 'the rights of
all--all men and women--to the respect in their persons of the
great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.'  To
elaborate further is unnecessary, for we have every confidence that
you interpret those words as we do.  And excuses are unnecessary,
for we can trust you to make allowances for those deficiencies
which we foretold and which this letter has abundantly displayed.

To return then to the form that you have sent and ask us to fill
up: for the reasons given we will leave it unsigned.  But in order
to prove as substantially as possible that our aims are the same as
yours, here is the guinea, a free gift, given freely, without any
other conditions than you choose to impose upon yourself.  It is
the third of three guineas; but the three guineas, you will
observe, though given to three different treasurers are all given
to the same cause, for the causes are the same and inseparable.

Now, since you are pressed for time, let me make an end;
apologizing three times over to the three of you, first for the
length of this letter, second for the smallness of the contribution,
and thirdly for writing at all.  The blame for that however rests
upon you, for this letter would never have been written had you not
asked for an answer to your own.




Notes and references:  One


1.  The Life of Mary Kingsley, by Stephen Gwynn, p. 15.  It is
difficult to get exact figures of the sums spent on the education
of educated men's daughters.  About £20 or £30 presumably covered
the entire cost of Mary Kingsley's education (b. 1862; d. 1900).  A
sum of £100 may be taken as about the average in the nineteenth
century and even later.  The women thus educated often felt the
lack of education very keenly.  'I always feel the defects of my
education most painfully when I go out,' wrote Anne J. Clough, the
first Principal of Newnham.  (Life of Anne J. Clough, by B. A.
Clough, p. 60.)  Elizabeth Haldane, who came, like Miss Clough, of
a highly literate family, but was educated in much the same way,
says that when she grew up, 'My first conviction was that I was not
educated, and I thought of how this could be put right.  I should
have loved going to college, but college in those days was unusual
for girls, and the idea was not encouraged.  It was also expensive.
For an only daughter to leave a widowed mother was indeed
considered to be out of the question, and no one made the plan seem
feasible.  There was in those days a new movement for carrying on
correspondence classes...'  (From One Century to Another, by
Elizabeth Haldane, p. 73.)  The efforts of such uneducated women to
conceal their ignorance were often valiant, but not always
successful.  'They talked agreeably on current topics, carefully
avoiding controversial subjects.  What impressed me was their
ignorance and indifference concerning anything outside their own
circle...no less a personage than the mother of the Speaker of
the House of Commons believed that California belonged to us, part
of our Empire!'  (Distant Fields, by H. A. Vachell, p. 109.)  That
ignorance was often simulated in the nineteenth century owing to
the current belief that educated men enjoyed it is shown by the
energy with which Thomas Gisborne, in his instructive work On the
Duties of Women (p. 278), rebuked those who recommend women
'studiously to refrain from discovering to their partners in
marriage the full extent of their abilities and attainments.'
'This is not discretion but art.  It is dissimulation, it is
deliberate imposition... It could scarcely be practised long
without detection.'

But the educated man's daughter in the nineteenth century was even
more ignorant of life than of books.  One reason for that ignorance
is suggested by the following quotation:  'It was supposed that
most men were not "virtuous", that is, that nearly all would be
capable of accosting and annoying--or worse--any unaccompanied
young woman whom they met.'  ('Society and the Season', by Mary,
Countess of Lovelace, in Fifty Years, 1882-1932, p. 37.)  She was
therefore confined to a very narrow circle; and her 'ignorance and
indifference' to anything outside it was excusable.  The connection
between that ignorance and the nineteenth-century conception of
manhood, which--witness the Victorian hero--made 'virtue' and
virility incompatible is obvious.  In a well-known passage
Thackeray complains of the limitations which virtue and virility
between them imposed upon his art.

2.  Our ideology is still so inveterately anthropocentric that it
has been necessary to coin this clumsy term--educated man's
daughter--to describe the class whose fathers have been educated at
public schools and universities.  Obviously, if the term
'bourgeois' fits her brother, it is grossly incorrect to use it of
one who differs so profoundly in the two prime characteristics of
the bourgeoisie--capital and environment.

3.  The number of animals killed in England for sport during the
past century must be beyond computation.  1,212 head of game is
given as the average for a day's shooting at Chatsworth in 1909.
(Men, Women and Things, by the Duke of Portland, p. 251.)  Little
mention is made in sporting memoirs of women guns; and their
appearance in the hunting field was the cause of much caustic
comment.  'Skittles', the famous nineteenth-century horsewoman, was
a lady of easy morals.  It is highly probable that there was held
to be some connection between sport and unchastity in women in the
nineteenth century.

4.  Francis and Riversdale Grenfell, by John Buchan, pp. 189, 205.

5.  Antony (Viscount Knebworth), by the Earl of Lytton, p. 355.

6.  The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Edmund Blunden, pp. 25.41.

7.  Lord Hewart, proposing the toast of 'England' at the banquet of
the Society of St George at Cardiff.

8. and 9.  The Daily Telegraph, 5 February 1937.

10.  There is of course one essential that the educated woman can
supply: children.  And one method by which she can help to prevent
war is to refuse to bear children.  Thus Mrs Helena Normanton is of
opinion that 'The only thing that women in any country can do to
prevent war is to stop the supply of "cannon fodder".'  (Report of
the Annual Council for Equal Citizenship, Daily Telegraph, 5 March
1937.)  Letters in the newspapers frequently support this view.  'I
can tell Mr Harry Campbell why women refuse to have children in
these times.  When men have learnt how to run the lands they govern
so that wars shall hit only those who make the quarrels, instead of
mowing down those who do not, then women may again feel like having
large families.  Why should women bring children into such a world
as this one is today?'  (Edith Maturin-Porch, in the Daily
Telegraph, 6 September 1937.)  The fact that the birth rate in the
educated class is falling would seem to show that educated women
are taking Mrs Normanton's advice.  It was offered them in very
similar circumstances over two thousand years ago by Lysistrata.

11.  There are of course innumerable kinds of influence besides
those specified in the text.  It varies from the simple kind
described in the following passage:  'Three years later...we
find her writing to him as Cabinet Minister to solicit his interest
on behalf of a favourite parson for a Crown living..." (Henry
Chaplin, a Memoir, by Lady Londonderry, p. 57) to the very subtle
kind exerted by Lady Macbeth upon her husband.  Somewhere between
the two lies the influence described by D. H. Lawrence:  'It is
hopeless for me to try to do anything without I have a woman at the
back of me... I daren't sit in the world without I have a woman
behind me... But a woman that I love sort of keeps me in direct
communication with the unknown, in which otherwise I am a bit lost'
(Letters of D. H. Lawrence, pp. 93-4), with which we may compare,
though the collocation is strange, the famous and very similar
definition given by the ex-King Edward VIII upon his abdication.
Present political conditions abroad seem to favour a return to the
use of interested influence.  For example:  'A story serves to
illustrate the present degree of women's influence in Vienna.
During the past autumn a measure was planned to further diminish
women's professional opportunities.  Protests, pleas, letters, all
were of no avail.  Finally, in desperation, a group of well-known
ladies of the city...got together and planned.  For the next
fortnight, for a certain number of hours per day, several of these
ladies got on to the telephone to the Ministers they knew
personally, ostensibly to ask them to dinner at their homes.  With
all the charm of which the Viennese are capable, they kept the
Ministers talking, asking about this and that, and finally
mentioning the matter that distressed them so much.  When the
Ministers had been rung up by several ladies, all of whom they did
not wish to offend, and kept from urgent State affairs by this
manoeuvre, they decided on compromise--and so the measure was
postponed.'  (Women Must Choose, by Hilary Newitt, p. 129.)
Similar use of influence was often deliberately made during the
battle for the franchise.  But women's influence is said to be
impaired by the possession of a vote.  Thus Marshal von Bieberstein
was of opinion that 'Women led men always...but he did not wish
them to vote.'  (From One Century to Another, by Elizabeth Haldane,
p. 258.)

12.  English women were much criticized for using force in the
battle for the franchise.  When in 1910 Mr Birrell had his hat
'reduced to pulp' and his shins kicked by suffragettes.  Sir
Almeric Fitzroy commented, 'an attack of this character upon a
defenceless old man by an organized band of "janissaries" will, it
is hoped, convince many people of the insane and anarchical spirit
actuating the movement.'  (Memoirs of Sir Almeric Fitzroy, vol. II,
p. 425.)  These remarks did not apply apparently to the force in
the European war.  The vote indeed was given to English women
largely because of the help they gave to Englishmen in using force
in that war.  'On 14 August [1916], Mr Asquith himself gave up his
opposition [to the franchise].  "It is true," he said, "[that
women] cannot fight in the sense of going out with rifles and so
forth, but...they have aided in the most effective way in the
prosecution of the war."'  (The Cause, by Ray Strachey, p. 354.)
This raises the difficult question whether those who did not aid in
the prosecution of the war, but did what they could to hinder the
prosecution of the war, ought to use the vote to which they are
entitled chiefly because others 'aided in the prosecution of the
war'?  That they are stepdaughters, not full daughters, of England
is shown by the fact that they change nationality on marriage.  A
woman, whether or not she helped to beat the Germans, becomes a
German if she marries a German.  Her political views must then be
entirely reversed, and her filial piety transferred.

13.  Sir Ernest Wild, K.C., by Robert J. Blackburn, pp. 174-5.

14.  That the right to vote has not proved negligible is shown by
the facts published from time to time by the National Union of
Societies for Equal Citizenship.  'This publication (What the Vote
Has Done) was originally a single-page leaflet; it has now (1927)
grown to a six-page pamphlet, and has to be constantly enlarged.'
(Josephine Butler, by M. G. Fawcett and E. M. Turner, note, p.
101.)

15.  There are no figures available with which to check facts that
must have a very important bearing upon the biology and psychology
of the sexes.  A beginning might be made in this essential but
strangely neglected preliminary by chalking on a large-scale map of
England property owned by men, red; by women, blue.  Then the
number of sheep and cattle consumed by each sex must be compared;
the hogsheads of wine and beer; the barrels of tobacco; after which
we must examine carefully their physical exercises; domestic
employments; facilities for sexual intercourse, etc.  Historians
are of course mainly concerned with war and politics; but sometimes
throw light upon human nature.  Thus Macaulay dealing with the
English country gentleman in the seventeenth century, says:  'His
wife and daughter were in tastes and acquirements below a
housekeeper or still-room maid of the present day.  They stitched
and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and made the
crust for the venison pasty.'

Again, 'The ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly
been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been
devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco.'
(Macaulay, History of England, Chapter Three.)  But the gentlemen
were still drinking and the ladies were still withdrawing a great
deal later.  'In my mother's young days before her marriage, the
old hard-drinking habits of the Regency and of the eighteenth
century still persisted.  At Woburn Abbey it was the custom for the
trusted old family butler to make his nightly report to my
grandmother in the drawing-room.  'The gentlemen have had a good
deal tonight; it might be as well for the young ladies to retire,'
or, 'The gentlemen have had very little tonight,' was announced
according to circumstances by this faithful family retainer.
Should the young girls be packed off upstairs, they liked standing
on an upper gallery of the staircase 'to watch the shouting,
riotous crowd issuing from the dining-room.'  (The Days Before
Yesterday, by Lord F. Hamilton, p. 322.)  It must be left to the
scientist of the future to tell us what effect drink and property
have had upon chromosomes.

16.  The fact that both sexes have a very marked though dissimilar
love of dress seems to have escaped the notice of the dominant sex
owing largely it must be supposed to the hypnotic power of
dominance.  Thus the late Mr Justice MacCardie, in summing up the
case of Mrs Frankau, remarked:  'Women cannot be expected to
renounce an essential feature of femininity or to abandon one of
nature's solaces for a constant and insuperable physical handicap
... Dress, after all, is one of the chief methods of women's self-
expression... In matters of dress women often remain children
to the end.  The psychology of the matter must not be overlooked.
But whilst bearing the above matters in mind the law has rightly
laid it down that the rule of prudence and proportion must be
observed.'  The Judge who thus dictated was wearing a scarlet robe,
an ermine cape, and a vast wig of artificial curls.  Whether he was
enjoying 'one of nature's solaces for a constant and insuperable
physical handicap', whether again he was himself observing 'the
rule of prudence and proportion' must be doubtful.  But 'the
psychology of the matter must not be overlooked'; and the fact that
the singularity of his own appearance together with that of
Admirals, Generals, Heralds, Life Guards, Peers, Beefeaters, etc.,
was completely invisible to him so that he was able to lecture the
lady without any consciousness of sharing her weakness, raises two
questions: how often must an act be performed before it becomes
tradition, and therefore venerable; and what degree of social
prestige causes blindness to the remarkable nature of one's own
clothes?  Singularity of dress, when not associated with office,
seldom escapes ridicule.

17.  In the New Year's Honours List for 1937, 147 men accepted
honours as against seven women.  For obvious reasons this cannot
be taken as a measure of their comparative desire for such
advertisement.  But that it should be easier, psychologically, for
a woman to reject honours than for a man seems to be indisputable.
For the fact that intellect (roughly speaking) is man's chief
professional asset, and that stars and ribbons are his chief means
of advertising intellect, suggests that stars and ribbons are
identical with powder and paint, a woman's chief method of
advertising her chief professional asset: beauty.  It would
therefore be as unreasonable to ask him to refuse a Knighthood as
to ask her to refuse a dress.  The sum paid for a Knighthood in
1901 would seem to provide a very tolerable dress allowance; '21
April (Sunday)--To see Meynell, who was as usual full of gossip.
It appears that the King's debts have been paid off privately by
his friends, one of whom is said to have lent £100,000, and
satisfies himself with £25,000 in repayment plus a Knighthood.'
(My Diaries, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Part II, p. 8.)

18.  What the precise figures are it is difficult for an outsider
to know.  But that the incomes are substantial can be conjectured
from a delightful review some years ago by Mr J. M. Keynes in the
Nation of a history of Clare College, Cambridge.  The book 'it is
rumoured cost six thousand pounds to produce.'  Rumour has it also
that a band of students returning at dawn from some festivity about
that time saw a cloud in the sky; which as they gazed assumed the
shape of a woman; who, being supplicated for a sign, let fall in a
shower of radiant hail the one word 'Rats'.  This was interpreted
to signify what from another page of the same number of the Nation
would seem to be the truth; that the students of one of the women's
colleges suffered greatly from 'cold gloomy ground floor bedrooms
overrun with mice'.  The apparition, it was supposed, took this
means of suggesting that if the gentlemen of Clare wished to do her
honour a cheque for £6,000 payable to the Principal of ---- would
celebrate her better than a book even though 'clothed in the finest
dress of paper and black buckram...'  There is nothing mythical,
however, about the fact recorded in the same number of the Nation
that 'Somerville received with pathetic gratitude the £7,000 which
went to it last year from the Jubilee gift and a private bequest.'

19.  A great historian has thus described the origin and character
of the universities, in one of which he was educated:  'The schools
of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and
barbarous science; and they are still tainted by the vices of their
origin... The legal incorporation of these societies by the
charters of popes and kings had given them a monopoly of public
instruction; and the spirit of monopolists is narrow, lazy, and
oppressive: their work is more costly and less productive than that
of independent artists; and the new improvements so eagerly grasped
by the competition of freedom, are admitted with slow and sullen
reluctance in those proud corporations, above the fear of a rival,
and below the confession of an error.  We may scarcely hope that
any reformation will be a voluntary act; and so deeply are they
rooted in law and prejudice, that even the omnipotence of
parliament would shrink from an inquiry into the state and abuses
of the two universities.'  (Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and
Writings.)  'The omnipotence of Parliament' did however institute
an inquiry in the middle of the nineteenth century 'into the state
of the University [of Oxford], its discipline, studies, and
revenues.  But there was so much passive resistance from the
Colleges that the last item had to go by the board.  It was
ascertained however that out of 542 Fellowships in all the Colleges
of Oxford only twenty-two were really open to competition without
restrictive conditions of patronage, place or kin... The
Commissioners...found that Gibbon's indictment had been
reasonable...'  (Herbert Warren of Magdalen, by Laurie Magnus,
pp. 47-9.)  Nevertheless the prestige of a university education
remained high; and Fellowships were considered highly desirable.
When Pusey became a Fellow of Oriel, 'The bells of the parish
church at Pusey expressed the satisfaction of his father and
family.'  Again, when Newman was elected a Fellow, 'all the bells
of the three towers [were] set pealing--at Newman's expense.'
(Oxford Apostles, by Geoffrey Faber, pp. 131, 69.)  Yet both Pusey
and Newman were men of a distinctly spiritual nature.

20.  The Crystal Cabinet, by Mary Butts, p. 138.  The sentence in
full runs:  'For just as I was told that desire for learning in
woman was against the will of God, so were many innocent freedoms,
innocent delights, denied in the same Name'--a remark which makes
it desirable that we should have a biography from the pen of an
educated man's daughter of the Deity in whose Name such atrocities
have been committed.  The influence of religion upon women's
education, one way or another, can scarcely be overestimated.  'If,
for example,' says Thomas Gisborne, 'the uses of music are
explained, let not its effect in heightening devotion be
overlooked.  If drawing is the subject of remark, let the student
be taught habitually to contemplate in the works of creation the
power, the wisdom and the goodness of their Author.'  (The Duties
of the Female Sex, by Thomas Gisborne, p. 85.)  The fact that Mr
Gisborne and his like--a numerous band--base their educational
theories upon the teaching of St Paul would seem to hint that the
female sex was to be 'taught habitually to contemplate in the works
of creation, the power and wisdom and the goodness,' not so much of
the Deity, but of Mr Gisborne.  And from that we were led to
conclude that a biography of the Deity would resolve itself into a
Dictionary of Clerical Biography.

21.  Mary Astell, by Florence M. Smith.  'Unfortunately, the
opposition to so new an idea (a college for women) was greater than
the interest in it, and came not only from the satirists of the
day, who, like the wits of all ages, found the progressive woman a
source of laughter and made Mary Astell the subject of stock jokes
in comedies of the Femmes Savantes type, but from churchmen, who
saw in the plan an attempt to bring back popery.  The strongest
opponent of the idea was a celebrated bishop, who, as Ballard
asserts, prevented a prominent lady from subscribing £10,000 to the
plan.  Elizabeth Elstob gave to Ballard the name of this celebrated
bishop in reply to an inquiry from him.  "According to Elizabeth
Elstob...it was Bishop Burnet that prevented that good design
by dissuading that lady from encouraging it".'  (op. cit., pp. 21-
2.)  'That lady' may have been Princess Ann, or Lady Elizabeth
Hastings; but there seems reason to think that it was the Princess.
That the Church swallowed the money is an assumption, but one
perhaps justified by the history of the Church.

22.  Ode for Music, performed in the Senate House at Cambridge, 1
July 1769.

23.  'I assure you I am not an enemy of women.  I am very
favourable to their employment as LABOURERS or in other MENIAL
capacity.  I have, however, doubts as to the likelihood of their
succeeding in business as capitalists.  I am sure the nerves of
most women would break down under the anxiety, and that most of
them are utterly destitute of the disciplined reticence necessary
to every sort of cooperation.  Two thousand years hence you may
have changed it all, but the present women will only flirt with
men, and quarrel with one another.'  Extract from a letter from
Walter Bagehot to Emily Davies, who had asked his help in founding
Girton.

24.  Recollections and Reflections, by Sir J. J. Thomson, pp. 86-8,
296-7.

25.  'Cambridge University still refuses to admit women to the full
rights of membership; it grants them only titular degrees and they
have therefore no share in the government of the University.'
(Memorandum on the Position of English Women in Relation to that of
English Men, by Philippa Strachey, 1935, p. 26.)  Nevertheless, the
Government makes a 'liberal grant' from public money to Cambridge
University.

26.  'The total number of students at recognized institutions for
the higher education of women who are receiving instruction in the
University or working in the University laboratories or museums
shall not at any time exceed five hundred.'  (The Student's
Handbook to Cambridge, 1934-5, p. 616.)  Whitaker informs us that
the number of male students who were in residence at Cambridge in
October 1935 was 5,328.  Nor would there appear to be any
limitation.

27.  The men's scholarship list at Cambridge printed in The Times
of 20 December 1937, measures roughly thirty-one inches; the
women's scholarship list at Cambridge measures roughly five inches.
There are, however, seventeen colleges for men and the list here
measured includes only eleven.  The thirty-one inches must
therefore be increased.  There are only two colleges for women;
both are here measured.

28.  Until the death of Lady Stanley of Alderley, there was no
chapel at Girton.  'When it was proposed to build a chapel, she
objected, on the ground that all the available funds should be
spent on education.  "So long as I live, there shall be no chapel
at Girton," I heard her say.  The present chapel was built
immediately after her death.'  (The Amberley Papers, Patricia and
Bertrand Russell, vol. I, p. 17.)  Would that her ghost had
possessed the same influence as her body!  But ghosts, it is said,
have no cheque books.

29.  'I have also a feeling that girls' schools have, on the whole,
been content to take the general lines of their education from the
older-established institutions for my own, the weaker sex.  My own
feeling is that the problem ought to be attacked by some original
genius on quite different lines...'  (Things Ancient and Modem,
by C. A. Alington, pp. 216-17.)  It scarcely needs genius or
originality to see that 'the lines', in the first place, must be
cheaper.  But it would be interesting to know what meaning we are
to attach to the word 'weaker' in the context.  For since Dr
Alington is a former Head Master of Eton he must be aware that his
sex has not only acquired but retained the vast revenues of that
ancient foundation--a proof, one would have thought, not of sexual
weakness but of sexual strength.  That Eton is not 'weak', at least
from the material point of view, is shown by the following
quotation from Dr Alington:  'Following out the suggestion of one
of the Prime Minister's Committees on Education, the Provost and
Fellows in my time decided that all scholarships at Eton should be
of a fixed value, capable of being liberally augmented in case of
need.  So liberal has been this augmentation that there are several
boys in College whose parents pay nothing towards either their
board or education.'  One of the benefactors was the late Lord
Rosebery.  'He was a generous benefactor to the school,' Dr
Alington informs us, 'and endowed a history scholarship, in
connection with which a characteristic episode occurred.  He asked
me whether the endowment was adequate and I suggested that a
further £200 would provide for the payment to the examiner.  He
sent a cheque for £2,000: his attention was called to the
discrepancy, and I have in my scrap book the reply in which he said
that he thought a good round sum would be better than a fraction.'
(op. cit., pp. 163, 186.)  The entire sum spent at Cheltenham
College for Girls in 1854 upon salaries and visiting teachers was
£1,300; 'and the accounts in December showed a deficit of £400.'
(Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham, by Elizabeth Raikes, p. 91.)

30.  The words 'vain and vicious' require qualification.  No one
would maintain that all lecturers and all lectures are 'vain and
vicious'; many subjects can only be taught with diagrams and
personal demonstration.  The words in the text refer only to the
sons and daughters of educated men who lecture their brothers and
sisters upon English literature; and for the reasons that it is an
obsolete practice dating from the Middle Ages when books were
scarce; that it owes its survival to pecuniary motives; or to
curiosity; that the publication in book form is sufficient proof of
the evil effect of an audience upon the lecturer intellectually;
and that psychologically eminence upon a platform encourages vanity
and the desire to impose authority.  Further, the reduction of
English literature to an examination subject must be viewed with
suspicion by all who have firsthand knowledge of the difficulty of
the art, and therefore of the very superficial value of an
examiner's approval or disapproval; and with profound regret by all
who wish to keep one art at least out of the hands of middlemen and
free, as long as may be, from all association with competition and
money making.  Again, the violence with which one school of
literature is now opposed to another, the rapidity with which one
school of taste succeeds another, may not unreasonably be traced to
the power which a mature mind lecturing immature minds has to
infect them with strong, if passing, opinions, and to tinge those
opinions with personal bias.  Nor can it be maintained that the
standard of critical or of creative writing has been raised.  A
lamentable proof of the mental docility to which the young are
reduced by lecturers is that the demand for lectures upon English
literature steadily increases (as every writer can bear witness)
and from the very class which should have learnt to read at home--
the educated.  If, as is sometimes urged in excuse, what is desired
by college literary societies is not knowledge of literature but
acquaintance with writers, there are cocktails, and there is
sherry; both better unmixed with Proust.  None of this applies of
course to those whose homes are deficient in books.  If the working
class finds it easier to assimilate English literature by word of
mouth they have a perfect right to ask the educated class to help
them thus.  But for the sons and daughters of that class after the
age of eighteen to continue to sip English literature through a
straw, is a habit that seems to deserve the terms vain and vicious;
which terms can justly be applied with greater force to those who
pander to them.

31.  It is difficult to procure exact figures of the sums allowed
the daughters of educated men before marriage.  Sophia Jex-Blake
had an allowance of from £30 to £40 annually; her father was an
upper-middle-class man.  Lady Lascelles, whose father was an Earl,
had, it seems, an allowance of about £100 in 1860; Mr Barrett, a
rich merchant, allowed his daughter Elizabeth 'from forty to forty-
five pounds...every three months, the income tax being first
deducted'.  But this seems to have been the interest upon £8,000,
'or more or less...it is difficult to ask about it,' which she
had 'in the funds', 'the money being in two different per cents',
and apparently, though belonging to Elizabeth, under Mr Barrett's
control.  But these were unmarried women.  Married women were not
allowed to own property until the passing of the Married Woman's
Property Act in 1870.  Lady St Helier records that since her
marriage settlements had been drawn up in conformity with the old
law, 'What money I had was settled on my husband, and no part of it
was reserved for my private use... I did not even possess a
cheque book, nor was I able to get any money except by asking my
husband.  He was kind and generous but he acquiesced in the
position then existing that a woman's property belonged to her
husband...he paid all my bills, he kept my bank book, and gave
me a small allowance for my personal expenses.'  (Memories of Fifty
Years, by Lady St Helier, p. 341.)  But she does not say what the
exact sum was.  The sums allowed to the sons of educated men were
considerably larger.  An allowance of £200 was considered to be
only just sufficient for an undergraduate at Balliol, 'which still
had traditions of frugality', about 1880.  On that allowance 'they
could not hunt and they could not gamble... But with care, and
with a home to fall back on in the vacations, they could make this
do.'  (Anthony Hope and His Books, by Sir C. Mallet, p. 38.)  The
sum that is now needed is considerably more.  Gino Watkins 'never
spent more than the £400 yearly allowance with which he paid all
his college and vacation bills'.  (Gino Watkins, by J. M. Scott, p.
59.)  This was at Cambridge, a few years ago.

32.  How incessantly women were ridiculed throughout the nineteenth
century for attempting to enter their solitary profession, novel
readers know, for those efforts provide half the stock-in-trade of
fiction.  But biography shows how natural it was, even in the
present century, for the most enlightened of men to conceive of all
women as spinsters, all desiring marriage.  Thus:  '"Oh dear, what
is to happen to them?" he [G. L. Dickinson] once murmured sadly as
a stream of aspiring but uninspiring spinsters flowed round the
front court of King's; "I don't know and they don't know."  And
then in still lower tones as if his bookshelves might overhear him,
"Oh dear!  What they want is a husband!'"  (Goldsworthy Lowes
Dickinson, by E. M. Forster, p. 106.)  'What they wanted' might
have been the Bar, the Stock Exchange or rooms in Gibbs's
Buildings, had the choice been open to them.  But it was not; and
therefore Mr Dickinson's remark was a very natural one.

33.  'Now and then, at least in the larger houses, there would be a
set party, selected and invited long beforehand, and over these
always one idol dominated--the pheasant.  Shooting had to be used
as a lure.  At such times the father of the family was apt to
assert himself.  If his house was to be filled to bursting, his
wines drunk in quantities, and his best shooting provided, then for
that shooting he would have the best guns possible.  What despair
for the mother of daughters to be told that the one guest whom of
all others she secretly desired to invite was a bad shot and
totally inadmissible!'  ('Society and the Season,' by Mary,
Countess of Lovelace, in Fifty Years, 1882-1932, p. 29.)

34.  Some idea of what men hoped that their wives might say and do,
at least in the nineteenth century, may be gathered from the
following hints in a letter 'addressed to a young lady for whom he
had a great regard a short time before her marriage' by John
Bowdler.  'Above all, avoid everything which has the LEAST TENDENCY
to indelicacy or indecorum.  Few women have any IDEA how much men
are disgusted at the slightest approach to these in any female, and
especially in one to whom they are attached.  By attending the
nursery, or the sick bed, women are too apt to acquire a habit of
conversing on such subjects in language which men of delicacy are
shocked at.'  (Life of John Bowdler, p. 123.)  But though delicacy
was essential, it could, after marriage, be disguised.  'In the
'seventies of last century, Miss Jex-Blake and her associates were
vigorously fighting the battle for admission of women to the
medical profession, and the doctors were still more vigorously
resisting their entry, alleging that it must be improper and
demoralizing for a woman to have to study and deal with delicate
and intimate medical questions.  At that time Ernest Hart, the
Editor of the British Medical Journal, told me that the majority of
the contributions sent to him for publication in the Journal
dealing with delicate and intimate medical questions were in the
handwriting of the doctors' wives, to whom they had obviously been
dictated.  There were no typewriters or stenographers available in
those days.'  (The Doctor's Second Thoughts, by Sir J. Crichton-
Browne, pp. 73, 74.)

The duplicity of delicacy was observed long before this, however.
Thus Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees (1714) says:  '...I
would have it first consider'd that the Modesty of Woman is the
result of Custom and Education, by which all unfashionable
Denudations and filthy Expressions are render'd frightful and
abominable to them, and that notwithstanding this, the most
Virtuous Young Woman alive will often, in spite of her Teeth, have
Thoughts and confus'd Ideas of Things arise in her Imagination,
which she would not reveal to some People for a Thousand Worlds.'



Notes and references: Two


1.  To quote the exact words of one such appeal:  'This letter is
to ask you to set aside for us garments for which you have no
further use... Stockings, of every sort, no matter how worn,
are also most acceptable... The Committee find that by offering
these clothes at bargain prices...they are performing a really
useful service to women whose professions require that they should
have presentable day and evening dresses which they can ill afford
to buy.'  (Extract from a letter received from the London and
National Society for Women's Service, 1938.)

2.  The Testament of Joad, by C. E. M. Joad, pp. 210-11.  Since the
number of societies run directly or indirectly by Englishwomen in
the cause of peace is too long to quote (see The Story of the
Disarmament Declaration, p. 15, for a list of the peace activities
of professional, business and working-class women) it is
unnecessary to take Mr Joad's criticism seriously, however
illuminating psychologically.

3.  Experiment in Autobiography, by H. G. Wells, p. 486.  The men's
'movement to resist the practical obliteration of their freedom by
Nazis or Fascists' may have been more perceptible.  But that it has
been more successful is doubtful.  Nazis now control the whole of
Austria.'  (Daily paper, 12 March 1938).

4.  'Women, I think, ought not to sit down to table with men; their
presence ruins conversation, tending to make it trivial and
genteel, or at best merely clever.'  (Under the Fifth Rib, by C. E.
M. Joad, p. 58.)  This is an admirably outspoken opinion, and if
all who share Mr Joad's sentiments were to express them as openly,
the hostess's dilemma--whom to ask, whom not to ask--would be
lightened and her labour saved.  If those who prefer the society of
their own sex at table would signify the fact, the men, say, by
wearing a red, the women by wearing a white rosette, while those
who prefer the sexes mixed wore parti-coloured buttonholes of red
and white blended, not only would much inconvenience and
misunderstanding be prevented, but it is possible that the honesty
of the buttonhole would kill a certain form of social hypocrisy now
all too prevalent.  Meanwhile, Mr Joad's candour deserves the
highest praise, and his wishes the most implicit observance.

5.  According to Mrs H. M. Swanwick, the W.S.P.U. had 'an income
from gifts, in the year 1912, of £42,000.'  (I Have Been Young, by
H. M. Swanwick, p. 189.)  The total spent in 1912 by the Women's
Freedom League was £26,772 12s. 9d.  (The Cause, by Ray Strachey,
p. 311.)  Thus the joint income of the two societies was £68,772
12s. 9d.  But the two societies were, of course, opposed.

6.  'But, exceptions apart, the general run of women's earnings is
low, and £250 a year is quite an achievement, even for a highly
qualified woman with years of experience.'  (Careers and Openings
for Women, by Ray Strachey, p. 70.)  Nevertheless 'The numbers of
women doing professional work have increased very fast in the last
twenty years, and were about 400,000 in 1931, in addition to those
doing secretarial work or employed in the Civil Service.'  (op.
cit, p. 44.)

7.  The income of the Labour Party in 1936 was £50,153.  (Daily
Telegraph, September 1937.)

8.  The British Civil Service.  The Public Service, by William A.
Robson, p. 16.

Professor Ernest Barker suggests that there should be an
alternative Civil Service Examination for 'men and women of an
older growth' who have spent some years in social work and social
service.  'Women candidates in particular might benefit.  It is
only a very small proportion of women students who succeed in the
present open competition: indeed very few compete.  On the
alternative system here suggested it is possible, and indeed
probable, that a much larger proportion of women would be
candidates.  Women have a genius and a capacity for social work and
service.  The alternative form of competition would give them a
chance of showing that genius and that capacity.  It might give
them a new incentive to compete for entry into the administrative
service of the state, in which their gifts and their presence are
needed.'  (The British Civil Servant.  'The Home Civil Service,' by
Professor Ernest Barker, p. 41.)  But while the home service
remains as exacting as it is at present, it is difficult to see how
an incentive can make women free to give 'their gifts and their
presence' to the service of the state, unless the state will
undertake the care of elderly parents; or make it a penal offence
for elderly people of either sex to require the services of
daughters at home.

9.  Mr Baldwin, speaking at Downing Street, at a meeting on behalf
of Newnham College Building Fund, 31 March 1936.

10.  The effect of a woman in the pulpit is thus defined in Women
and the Ministry, Some Considerations on the Report of the
Archbishops' Commission on the Ministry of Women (1936), p. 24.
'But we maintain that the ministration of women...will tend to
produce a lowering of the spiritual tone of Christian worship, such
as is not produced by the ministrations of men before congregations
largely or exclusively female.  It is a tribute to the quality of
Christian womanhood that it is possible to make this statement; but
it would appear to be a simple matter of fact that in the thoughts
and desires of that sex the natural is more easily made subordinate
to the supernatural, the carnal to the spiritual than is the case
with men; and that the ministrations of a male priesthood do not
normally arouse that side of female human nature which should be
quiescent during the times of the adoration of almighty God.  We
believe, on the other hand, that it would be impossible for the
male members of the average Anglican congregation to be present at
a service at which a woman ministered without becoming unduly
conscious of her sex.'

In the opinion of the Commissioners, therefore, Christian women are
more spiritually minded than Christian men--a remarkable, but no
doubt adequate, reason for excluding them from the priesthood.

11.  Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1936.

12.  Daily Telegraph, 1936.

13.  Daily Telegraph, 22 January 1936.

14.  'There are, so far as I know, no universal rules on this
subject [i.e.  sexual relations between civil servants]; but civil
servants and municipal officers of both sexes are certainly
expected to observe the conventional proprieties and to avoid
conduct which might find its way into the newspapers and there be
described as "scandalous".  Until recently sexual relations between
men and women officers of the Post Office were punishable with
immediate dismissal of both parties... The problem of avoiding
newspaper publicity is a fairly easy one to solve so far as court
proceedings are concerned: but official restriction extends further
so as to prevent women civil servants (who usually have to resign
on marriage) from cohabiting openly with men if they desire to do
so.  The matter, therefore, takes on a different complexion.'  (The
British Civil Servant.  The Public Service, by William A. Robson,
pp. 14, 15.)

15.  Most men's clubs confine women to a special room, or annexe,
and exclude them from other apartments, whether on the principle
observed at St Sofia that they are impure, or whether on the
principle observed at Pompeii that they are too pure, is matter for
speculation.

16.  The power of the Press to burke discussion of any undesirable
subject was, and still is, very formidable.  It was one of the
'extraordinary obstacles' against which Josephine Butler had to
fight in her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act.  'Early
in 1870 the London Press began to adopt that policy of silence with
regard to the question, which lasted for many years, and called
forth from the Ladies' Association the famous "Remonstrance against
the Conspiracy of Silence", signed by Harriet Martineau and
Josephine E. Butler, which concluded with the following words:
"Surely, while such a conspiracy of silence is possible and
practised among leading journalists, we English greatly exaggerate
our privileges as a free people when we profess to encourage a free
press, and to possess the right to hear both sides in a momentous
question of morality and legislation."'  (Personal Reminiscences of
a Great Crusade, by Josephine E. Butler, p. 49.)  Again, during the
battle for the vote the Press used the boycott with great effect.
And so recently as July 1937 Miss Philippa Strachey in a letter
headed 'A Conspiracy of Silence', printed (to its honour) by the
Spectator almost repeats Mrs Butler's words:  'Many hundreds and
thousands of men and women have been participating in an endeavour
to induce the Government to abandon the provision in the new
Contributory Pensions Bill for the black-coated workers which for
the first time introduces a differential income limit for men and
women entrants... In the course of the last month the Bill has
been before the House of Lords, where this particular provision has
met with strong and determined opposition from all sides of the
Chamber... These are events one would have supposed to be of
sufficient interest to be recorded in the daily Press.  But they
have been passed over in complete silence by the newspapers from
The Times to the Daily Herald... The differential treatment of
women under this Bill has aroused a feeling of resentment among
them such as has not been witnessed since the granting of the
franchise... How is one to account for this being completely
concealed by the Press?'

17.  Flesh wounds were of course inflicted during the battle of
Westminster.  Indeed the fight for the vote seems to have been more
severe than is now recognized.  Thus Flora Drummond says:  'Whether
we won the vote by our agitation, as I believe, or whether we got
it for other reasons, as some people say, I think many of the
younger generation will find it hard to believe the fury and
brutality aroused by our claim for votes for women less than thirty
years ago.'  (Flora Drummond in the Listener, 25 August 1937.)  The
younger generation is presumably so used to the fury and brutality
that claims for liberty arouse that they have no emotion available
for this particular instance.  Moreover, that particular fight has
not yet taken its place among the fights which have made England
the home, and Englishmen the champions of, liberty.  The fight for
the vote is still generally referred to in terms of sour
deprecation:  '...and the women...had not begun that
campaign of burning, whipping, and picture-slashing which was
finally to prove to both Front Benches their eligibility for the
Franchise.'  (Reflections and Memories, by Sir John Squire, p. 10.)
The younger generation therefore can be excused if they believe
that there was nothing heroic about a campaign in which only a few
windows were smashed, shins broken, and Sargent's portrait of Henry
James damaged, but not irreparably, with a knife.  Burning,
whipping and picture-slashing only it would seem become heroic when
carried out on a large scale by men with machine-guns.

18.  The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, M.D., p. 72.

19.  'Much has lately been said and written of the achievements and
accomplishments of Sir Stanley Baldwin during his Premierships and
too much would be impossible.  Might I be permitted to call
attention to what Lady Baldwin has done?  When I first joined the
committee of this hospital in 1929, analgesics (pain deadeners) for
normal maternity cases in the wards were almost unknown, now their
use is ordinary routine and they are availed of in practically 100
per cent of cases, and what is true of this hospital is true
virtually for all similar hospitals.  This remarkable change in so
short a time is due to the inspiration and the tireless efforts and
encouragement of Mrs Stanley Baldwin, as she then was...'
(Letter to The Times from C. S. Wentworth Stanley, Chairman House
Committee, the City of London Maternity Hospital, 1937.)  Since
chloroform was first administered to Queen Victoria on the birth of
Prince Leopold in April 1853 'normal maternity cases in the wards'
have had to wait for seventy-six years and the advocacy of a Prime
Minister's wife to obtain this relief.

20.  According to Debrett the Knights and Dames of the Most
Excellent Order of the British Empire wear a badge consisting of 'a
cross patonce, enamelled pearl, fimbriated or, surmounted by a gold
medallion with a representation of Britannia seated within a circle
gules inscribed with the motto "For God and the Empire".  This is
one of the few orders open to women, but their subordination is
properly marked by the fact that the ribbon in their case is only
two inches and one quarter in breadth; whereas the ribbon of the
Knights is three inches and three quarters in breadth.  The stars
also differ in size.  The motto, however, is the same for both
sexes, and must be held to imply that those who thus ticket
themselves see some connection between the Deity and the Empire,
and hold themselves prepared to defend them.  What happens if
Britannia seated within a circle gules is opposed (as is
conceivable) to the other authority whose seat is not specified on
the medallion, Debrett does not say, and the Knights and Dames must
themselves decide.

21.  Life of Sir Ernest Wild, K.C., by R. J. Rackham, p. 91.

22.  Lord Baldwin, speech reported in The Times, 20 April 1936.

23.  Life of Charles Gore, by G. L. Prestige, D.D., pp. 240-41.

24.  Life of Sir William Broadbent, K.C.V.O., F.R.S., edited by his
daughter, M. E. Broadbent, p. 242.

25.  The Lost Historian, a Memoir of Sir Sidney Low, by Desmond
Chapman-Huston, p. 198.

26.  Thoughts and Adventures, by the Rt Hon. Winston Churchill, p.
57.

27.  Speech at Belfast by Lord Londonderry, reported in The Times,
11 July 1936.

28.  Thoughts and Adventures, by the Rt Hon. Winston Churchill, p.
279.

29.  Daily Herald, 13 February 1935.

30.  Goethe's Faust, translated by Melian Stawell and G. L.
Dickinson.

31.  The Life of Charles Tomlinson, by his niece, Mary Tomlinson,
p. 30.

32.  Miss Weeton, Journal of a Governess, 1807-1811, edited by
Edward Hall, pp. 14, xvii.

33.  A Memoir of Anne Jemima Clough, by B. A. Clough, p. 32.

34.  Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, by Josephine
Butler, p. 189.

35.  'You and I know that it matters little if we have to be the
out-of-sight piers driven deep into the marsh, on which the visible
ones are carried, that support the bridge.  We do not mind if,
hereafter, people forget that there ARE any low down at all; if
some have to be used up in trying experiments, before the best way
of building the bridge is discovered.  We are quite willing to be
among these.  The bridge is what we care for, and not our place in
it, and we believe that, to the end, it may be kept in remembrance
that this is alone to be our object.'  (Letter from Octavia Hill to
Mrs N. Senior, 20 September 1874.  The Life of Octavia Hill, by C.
Edmund Maurice, pp. 307-8.)

Octavia Hill (1838-1912) initiated the movement for 'securing
better homes for the poor and open spaces for the public... The
"Octavia Hill System" has been adopted over the whole planned
extension of [Amsterdam].  In January 1928 no less than 28,648
dwellings had been built.'  (Octavia Hill, from letters edited by
Emily S. Maurice, pp. 10-11.)

36.  The maid played so important a part in English upper-class
life from the earliest times until the year 1914, when the Hon.
Monica Grenfell went to nurse wounded soldiers accompanied by a
maid [Bright Armour, by Monica Salmond, p. 20], that some
recognition of her services seems to be called for.  Her duties
were peculiar.  Thus she had to escort her mistress down Piccadilly
'where a few club men might have looked at her out of a window,'
but was unnecessary in Whitechapel, 'where malefactors were
possibly lurking round every corner.'  But her office was
undoubtedly arduous.  Wilson's part in Elizabeth Barrett's private
life is well known to readers of the famous letters.  Later in the
century (about 1889-92) Gertrude Bell 'went with Lizzie, her maid,
to picture exhibitions; she was fetched by Lizzie from dinner
parties; she went with Lizzie to see the Settlement in Whitechapel
where Mary Talbot was working...'  (Early Letters of Gertrude
Bell, edited by Lady Richmond.)  We have only to consider the hours
she waited in cloak rooms, the acres she toiled in picture
galleries, the miles she trudged along West End pavements to
conclude that if Lizzie's day is now almost over, it was in its day
a long one.  Let us hope that the thought that she was putting into
practice the commands laid down by St Paul in his Letters to Titus
and the Corinthians, was a support; and the knowledge that she was
doing her utmost to deliver her mistress's body intact to her
master a solace.  Even so in the weakness of the flesh and in the
darkness of the beetle-haunted basement she must sometimes have
bitterly reproached St Paul on the one hand for his chastity, and
the gentlemen of Piccadilly on the other for their lust.  It is
much to be regretted that no lives of maids, from which a more
fully documented account could be constructed, are to be found in
the Dictionary of National Biography.

37.  The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, collected and edited by
Elsa Richmond, pp. 217-18.

38.  The question of chastity, both of mind and body, is of the
greatest interest and complexity.  The Victorian, Edwardian and
much of the Fifth Georgian conception of chastity was based, to go
no further back, upon the words of St Paul.  To understand their
meaning we should have to understand his psychology and
environment--no light task in view of his frequent obscurity and
the lack of biographical material.  From internal evidence, it
seems clear that he was a poet and a prophet, but lacked logical
power, and was without that psychological training which forces
even the least poetic or prophetic nowadays to subject their
personal emotions to scrutiny.  Thus his famous pronouncement on
the matter of veils, upon which the theory of women's chastity
seems to be based, is susceptible to criticism from several angles.
In the Letter to the Corinthians his argument that a woman must be
veiled when she prays or prophesies is based upon the assumption
that to be unveiled 'is one and the same thing as if she were
shaven.'  That assumption granted, we must ask next:  What shame is
there in being shaven?  Instead of replying, St Paul proceeds to
assert, 'For a man indeed ought not to have his head veiled,
forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God': from which it
appears that it is not being shaven in itself that is wrong; but to
be a woman and to be shaven.  It is wrong, it appears, for the
woman because 'the woman is the glory of the man.'  If St Paul had
said openly that he liked the look of women's long hair many of us
would have agreed with him, and thought the better of him for
saying so.  But other reasons appeared to him preferable, as
appears from his next remark:  'For the man is not of the woman;
but the woman of the man; for neither was the man created for the
woman; but the woman for the man: for this cause ought the woman to
have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels.'  What
view the angels took of long hair we have no means of knowing; and
St Paul himself seems to have been doubtful of their support or he
would not think it necessary to drag in the familiar accomplice
nature.  'Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man
have long hair, it is a dishonour to him?  But if a woman have long
hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a
covering.  But if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no
such custom, neither the churches of God.'  The argument from
nature may seem to us susceptible of amendment; nature, when allied
with financial advantage, is seldom of divine origin; but if the
basis of the argument is shifty, the conclusion is firm.  'Let the
women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto
them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the
law.'  Having thus invoked the familiar but always suspect trinity
of accomplices, Angels, nature and law, to support his personal
opinion, St Paul reaches the conclusion which has been looming
unmistakably ahead of us:  'And if they would learn anything, let
them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman
to speak in the church.'  The nature of that 'shame', which is
closely connected with chastity has, as the letter proceeds, been
considerably alloyed.  For it is obviously compounded of certain
sexual and personal prejudices.  St Paul, it is obvious, was not
only a bachelor (for his relations with Lydia see Renan, Saint
Paul, p. 149.  'Est-il cependant absolument impossible que Paul ait
contracté avec cette soeur une union plus intime?  On ne saurait
l'affirmer'); and, like many bachelors, suspicious of the other
sex; but a poet and like many poets preferred to prophesy himself
rather than to listen to the prophecies of others.  Also he was of
the virile or dominant type, so familiar at present in Germany, for
whose gratification a subject race or sex is essential.  Chastity
then as defined by St Paul is seen to be a complex conception,
based upon the love of long hair; the love of subjection; the
love of an audience; the love of laying down the law, and,
subconsciously, upon a very strong and natural desire that the
woman's mind and body shall be reserved for the use of one man and
one only.  Such a conception when supported by the Angels, nature,
law, custom and the Church, and enforced by a sex with a strong
personal interest to enforce it, and the economic means, was of
undoubted power.  The grip of its white if skeleton fingers can be
found upon whatever page of history we open from St Paul to
Gertrude Bell.  Chastity was invoked to prevent her from studying
medicine; from painting from the nude; from reading Shakespeare;
from playing in orchestras; from walking down Bond Street alone.
In 1848 it was 'an unpardonable solecism' for the daughters of a
gardener to drive down Regent Street in a hansom cab (Paxton and
the Bachelor Duke, by Violet Markham, p. 288); that solecism became
a crime, of what magnitude theologians must decide, if the flaps
were left open.  In the beginning of the present century the
daughter of an ironmaster (for let us not flout distinctions said
today to be of prime importance), Sir Hugh Bell, had 'reached the
age of 27 and married without ever having walked alone down
Piccadilly... Gertrude, of course, would never have dreamt of
doing that...'  The West End was the contaminated area.  'It was
one's own class that was taboo;...'  (The Earlier Letters of
Gertrude Bell, collected and edited by Elsa Richmond, pp. 217-18.)
But the complexities and inconsistencies of chastity were such that
the same girl who had to be veiled, i.e. accompanied by a male or a
maid, in Piccadilly, could visit Whitechapel, or Seven Dials, then
haunts of vice and disease, alone and with her parents' approval.
This anomaly did not altogether escape comment.  Thus Charles
Kingsley as a boy exclaimed:  '...and the girls have their heads
crammed full of schools, and district visiting, and baby linen, and
penny clubs.  Confound!!! and going about among the most abominable
scenes of filth and wretchedness, and indecency to visit the poor
and read the Bible to them.  My own mother says that the places
they go into are fit for no girl to see, and that they should not
know such things exist.'  (Charles Kingsley, by Margaret Farrand
Thorp, p. 12.)  Mrs Kingsley, however, was exceptional.  Most of
the daughters of educated men saw such 'abominable scenes', and
knew that such things existed.  That they concealed their
knowledge, is probable; what effect that concealment had
psychologically it is impossible here to inquire.  But that
chastity, whether real or imposed, was an immense power, whether
good or bad, it is impossible to doubt.  Even today it is probable
that a woman has to fight a psychological battle of some severity
with the ghost of St Paul, before she can have intercourse with a
man other than her husband.  Not only was the social stigma
strongly exerted on behalf of chastity, but the Bastardy Act did
its utmost to impose chastity by financial pressure.  Until women
had the vote in 1918, 'the Bastardy Act of 1872 fixed the sum of
5s. a week as the maximum which a father, whatever his wealth,
could be made to pay towards the maintenance of his child.'
(Josephine Butler, by M. G. Fawcett and E. M. Turner, note, p.
101.)  Now that St Paul and many of his apostles have been unveiled
themselves by modern science chastity has undergone considerable
revision.  Yet there is said to be a reaction in favour of some
degree of chastity for both sexes.  This is partly due to economic
causes; the protection of chastity by maids is an expensive item in
the bourgeois budget.  The psychological argument in favour of
chastity is well expressed by Mr Upton Sinclair:  'Nowadays we hear
a great deal about mental troubles caused by sex repression; it is
the mood of the moment.  We do not hear anything about the
complexes which may be caused by sex indulgence.  But my
observation has been that those who permit themselves to follow
every sexual impulse are quite as miserable as those who repress
every sexual impulse.  I remember a class-mate in College; I said
to him:  "Did it ever occur to you to stop and look at your own
mind?  Everything that comes to you is turned into sex."  He looked
surprised, and I saw that it was a new idea to him; he thought it
over, and said:  "I guess you are right."'  (Candid Reminiscences,
by Upton Sinclair, p. 63.)  Further illustration is supplied by the
following anecdote:  'In the splendid library of Columbia
University were treasures of beauty, costly volumes of engravings,
and in my usual greedy fashion I went at these, intending to learn
all there was to know about Renaissance art in a week or two.  But
I found myself overwhelmed by this mass of nakedness; my senses
reeled, and I had to quit.'  (op. cit., pp. 62-3.)

39.  The translation here used is by Sir Richard Jebb (Sophocles,
the Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary and
translation, in English prose).  It is impossible to judge any book
from a translation, yet even when thus read The Antigone is
clearly one of the great masterpieces of dramatic literature.
Nevertheless, it could undoubtedly be made, if necessary, into
anti-Fascist propaganda.  Antigone herself could be transformed
either into Mrs Pankhurst, who broke a window and was imprisoned in
Holloway; or into Frau Pommer, the wife of a Prussian mines
official at Essen, who said:  '"The thorn of hatred has been driven
deep enough into the people by the religious conflicts, and it is
high time that the men of today disappeared."... She has been
arrested and is to be tried on a charge of insulting and slandering
the State and the Nazi movement.'  (The Times, 12 August 1935.)
Antigone's crime was of much the same nature and was punished in
much the same way.  Her words, 'See what I suffer, and from whom,
because I feared to cast away the fear of heaven!... And what
law of heaven have I transgressed?  Why, hapless one, should I look
to the gods any more--what ally should I invoke--when by piety I
have earned the name of impious?' could be spoken either by Mrs
Pankhurst, or by Frau Pommer; and are certainly topical.  Creon,
again, who 'thrust the children of the sunlight to the shades, and
ruthlessly lodged a living soul in the grave'; who held that
'disobedience is the worst of evils', and that 'whomsoever the city
may appoint, that man must be obeyed, in little things and great,
in just things and unjust' is typical of certain politicians in the
past, and of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini in the present.  But
though it is easy to squeeze these characters into up-to-date
dress, it is impossible to keep them there.  They suggest too much;
when the curtain falls we sympathize, it may be noted, even with
Creon himself.  This result, to the propagandist undesirable, would
seem to be due to the fact that Sophocles (even in a translation)
uses freely all the faculties that can be possessed by a writer;
and suggests, therefore, that if we use art to propagate political
opinions, we must force the artist to clip and cabin his gift to do
us a cheap and passing service.  Literature will suffer the same
mutilation that the mule has suffered; and there will be no more
horses.

40.  The five words of Antigone are:  [Greek text]  'Tis not my
nature to join in hating, but in loving.  (Antigone, line 523,
Jebb.)  To which Creon replied:  'Pass, then, to the world of the
dead, and, if thou must needs love, love them.  While I live, no
woman shall rule me.'

41.  Even at a time of great political stress like the present it
is remarkable how much criticism is still bestowed upon women.  The
announcement, 'A shrewd, witty and provocative study of modern
woman', appears on an average three times yearly in publishers'
lists.  The author, often a doctor of letters, is invariably of the
male sex; and 'to mere man', as the blurb puts it (see Times Lit.
Sup., 12 March 1938), 'this book will be an eye-opener.'



Notes and references: Three


1.  It is to be hoped that some methodical person has made a
collection of the various manifestos and questionnaires issued
broadcast during the years 1936-7.  Private people of no political
training were invited to sign appeals asking their own and foreign
governments to change their policy; artists were asked to fill up
forms stating the proper relations of the artist to the State, to
religion, to morality; pledges were required that the writer should
use English grammatically and avoid vulgar expressions; and
dreamers were invited to analyse their dreams.  By way of
inducement it was generally proposed to publish the results in the
daily or weekly Press.  What effect this inquisition has had upon
governments it is for the politician to say.  Upon literature,
since the output of books is unstaunched, and grammar would seem to
be neither better nor worse, the effect is problematical.  But the
inquisition is of great psychological and social interest.
Presumably it originated in the state of mind suggested by Dean
Inge (The Rickman Godlee Lecture, reported in The Times, 23
November 1937), 'whether in our own interests we were moving in the
right direction.  If we went on as we were doing now, would the man
of the future be superior to us or not?... Thoughtful people
were beginning to realize that before congratulating ourselves on
moving fast we ought to have some idea where we were moving to': a
general self-dissatisfaction and desire 'to live differently'.  It
also points, indirectly, to the death of the Siren, that much
ridiculed and often upper-class lady who by keeping open house for
the aristocracy, plutocracy, intelligentsia, ignorantsia, etc.,
tried to provide all classes with a talking-ground or scratching-
post where they could rub up minds, manners, and morals more
privately, and perhaps as usefully.  The part that the Siren played
in promoting culture and intellectual liberty in the eighteenth
century is held by historians to be of some importance.  Even in
our own day she had her uses.  Witness W. B. Yeats--'How often I
have wished that he [Synge] might live long enough to enjoy that
communion with idle, charming, cultivated women which Balzac in one
of his dedications calls "the chief consolation of genius"!'
(Dramatis Personae, W. B. Yeats, p. 127.)  Lady St Helier who, as
Lady Jeune, preserved the eighteenth-century tradition, informs
us, however, that 'Plovers' eggs at 2s. 6d. apiece, forced
strawberries, early asparagus, petits poussins...are now
considered almost a necessity by anyone aspiring to give a good
dinner' (1909); and her remark that the reception day was 'very
fatiguing...how exhausted I felt when half-past seven came, and
how gladly at eight o'clock I sat down to a peaceful tête-à-tête
dinner with my husband!'  (Memories of Fifty Years, by Lady St
Helier, pp. 3, 5, 182) may explain why such houses are shut, why
such hostesses are dead, and why therefore the intelligentsia, the
ignorantsia, the aristocracy, the bureaucracy, the bourgeoisie,
etc., are driven (unless somebody will revive that society on an
economic basis) to do their talking in public.  But in view of the
multitude of manifestos and questionnaires now in circulation it
would be foolish to suggest another into the minds and motives of
the Inquisitors.

2.  'He did begin however on 13 May (1844) to lecture weekly at
Queen's College which Maurice and other professors at King's had
established a year before, primarily for the examination and
training of governesses.  Kingsley was ready to share in this
unpopular task because he believed in the higher education of
women.'  (Charles Kingsley, by Margaret Farrand Thorp, p. 65.)

3.  The French, as the above quotation shows, are as active as the
English in issuing manifestos.  That the French, who refuse to
allow the women of France to vote, and still inflict upon them laws
whose almost medieval severity can be studied in The Position of
Women in Contemporary France, by Frances Clark, should appeal to
English women to help them to protect liberty and culture must
cause surprise.

4.  Strict accuracy, here slightly in conflict with rhythm and
euphony, requires the word 'port'.  A photograph in the daily Press
of 'Dons in a Senior Common Room after dinner' (1937) showed 'a
railed trolley in which the port decanter travels across a gap
between diners at the fireplace, and thus continues its round
without passing against the sun'.  Another picture shows the
'sconce' cup in use.  'This old Oxford custom ordains that mention
of certain subjects in Hall shall be punished by the offender
drinking three pints of beer at one draught...'  Such examples
are by themselves enough to prove how impossible it is for a
woman's pen to describe life at a man's college without committing
some unpardonable solecism.  But the gentlemen whose customs are
often, it is to be feared, travestied, will extend their indulgence
when they reflect that the female novelist, however reverent in
intention, works under grave physical drawbacks.  Should she wish,
for example, to describe a Feast at Trinity, Cambridge, she has to
'listen through the peephole in the room of Mrs Butler (the
Master's wife) to the speeches taking place at the Feast which was
held in Trinity College'.  Miss Haldane's observation was made in
1907, when she reflected that 'The whole surroundings seemed
medieval.'  (From One Century to Another, by E. Haldane, p. 235.)

5.  According to Whitaker there is a Royal Society of Literature
and also the British Academy, both presumably, since they have
offices and officers, official bodies, but what their powers are it
is impossible to say, since if Whitaker had not vouched for their
existence it would scarcely have been suspected.

6.  Women were apparently excluded from the British Museum Reading-
Room in the eighteenth century.  Thus:  'Miss Chudleigh solicits
permission to be received into the reading-room.  The only female
student who as yet has honoured us was Mrs Macaulay; and your
Lordship may recollect what an untoward event offended her
delicacy.'  (Daniel Wray to Lord Harwicke, 22 October 1768.
Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, p.
137.)  The editor adds in a footnote:  'This alludes to the
indelicacy of a gentleman there, in Mrs Macaulay's presence; of
which the particulars will not bear to be repeated.'

7.  The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M. O. W. Oliphant,
arranged and edited by Mrs Harry Coghill.  Mrs Oliphant (1825-97)
'lived in perpetual embarrassment owing to her undertaking
education and maintenance of her widowed brother's children in
addition to her own two sons...'  (Dictionary of National
Biography.)

8.  Macaulay's History of England, vol. III, p. 278 (standard
edition).

9.  Mr Littlewood, until recently dramatic critic of the Morning
Post, described the condition of Journalism at Present at a dinner
given in his honour, 6 December 1937.  Mr Littlewood said:  'that
he had in season and out of season fought for more space for the
theatre in the columns of the London daily papers.  It was Fleet
Street where, between eleven and half-past twelve, not to mention
before and after, thousands of beautiful words and thoughts were
systematically massacred.  It had been his lot for at least two out
of his four decades to return to that shambles every night with the
sure and certain prospect of being told that the paper was already
full with important news, and that there was no room for any
sanguinary stuff about the theatre.  It had been his luck to wake
up the next morning to find himself answerable for the mangled
remains of what was once a good notice... It was not the fault
of the men in the office.  Some of them put the blue pencil through
with tears in their eyes.  The real culprit was that huge public
who knew nothing about the theatre and could not be expected to
care.'  The Times, 6 December 1937.

Mr Douglas Jerrold describes the treatment of politics in the
Press.  'In those few brief years [between 1928-33] truth had fled
from Fleet Street.  You could never tell all the truth all the
time.  You never will be able to do so.  But you used at least to
be able to tell the truth about other countries.  By 1933, you did
it at your peril.  In 1928 there was no direct political pressure
from advertisers.  Today it is not only direct but effective.'

Literary criticism would seem to be in much the same case and for
the same reason:  'There are no critics in whom the public have any
more confidence.  They trust, if at all, to the different Book
Societies, and the selections of individual newspapers, and on the
whole they are wise... The Book Society are frankly book
sellers, and the great national newspapers cannot afford to puzzle
their readers.  They must all choose books which have, at the
prevailing level of public taste, a potentially large sale.'
(Georgian Adventure, by Douglas Jerrold, pp. 282, 283, 298.)

10.  While it is obvious that under the conditions of journalism at
present the criticism of literature must be unsatisfactory, it is
also obvious that no change can be made, without changing the
economic structure of society and the psychological structure of
the artist.  Economically, it is necessary that the reviewer should
herald the publication of a new book with his town-crier's shout 'O
yez, O yez, O yez, such and such a book has been published; its
subject is this, that or the other.'  Psychologically, vanity and
the desire for 'recognition' are still so strong among artists that
to starve them of advertisement and to deny them frequent if
contrasted shocks of praise and blame would be as rash as the
introduction of rabbits into Australia: the balance of nature would
be upset and the consequences might well be disastrous.  The
suggestion in the text is not to abolish public criticism; but to
supplement it by a new service based on the example of the medical
profession.  A panel of critics recruited from reviewers (many of
whom are potential critics of genuine taste and learning) would
practise like doctors and in strictest privacy.  Publicity removed,
it follows that most of the distractions and corruptions which
inevitably make contemporary criticism worthless to the writer
would be abolished; all inducement to praise or blame for personal
reasons would be destroyed; neither sales nor vanity would be
affected; the author could attend to criticism without considering
the effect upon public or friends; the critic could criticize
without considering the editor's blue pencil or the public taste.
Since criticism is much desired by the living, as the constant
demand for it proves, and since fresh books are as essential for
the critic's mind as fresh meat for his body, each would gain;
literature even might benefit.  The advantages of the present
system of public criticism are mainly economic; the evil effects
psychologically are shown by the two famous Quarterly reviews of
Keats and Tennyson.  Keats was deeply wounded; and 'the effect...
upon Tennyson himself was penetrating and prolonged.  His first
act was at once to withdraw from the press The Lover's Tale...
We find him thinking of leaving England altogether, of living
abroad.'  (Tennyson, by Harold Nicolson, p. 118.)  The effect of Mr
Churton Collins upon Sir Edmund Gosse was much the same:  'His
self-confidence was undermined, his personality reduced...was
not everyone watching his struggles regarding him as doomed?...
His own account of his sensations was that he went about feeling
that he had been flayed alive.'  (The Life and Letters of Sir
Edmund Gosse, by Evan Charteris, p. 196.)

11.  'A-ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man.'  This word has been coined
in order to define those who make use of words with the desire to
hurt but at the same time to escape detection.  In a transitional
age when many qualities are changing their value, new words to
express new values are much to be desired.  Vanity, for example,
which would seem to lead to severe complications of cruelty and
tyranny, judging from evidence supplied abroad, is still masked by
a name with trivial associations.  A supplement to the Oxford
English Dictionary is indicated.

12.  Memoir of Anne J. Clough, by B. A. Clough, pp. 38, 67.

'The Sparrow's Nest', by William Wordsworth.

13.  In the nineteenth century much valuable work was done for the
working class by educated men's daughters in the only way that was
then open to them.  But now that some of them at least have
received an expensive education, it is arguable that they can work
much more effectively by remaining in their own class and using the
methods of that class to improve a class which stands much in need
of improvement.  If on the other hand the educated (as so often
happens) renounce the very qualities which education should have
bought--reason, tolerance, knowledge--and play at belonging to the
working class and adopting its cause, they merely expose that cause
to the ridicule of the educated class, and do nothing to improve
their own.  But the number of books written by the educated about
the working class would seem to show that the glamour of the
working class and the emotional relief afforded by adopting its
cause, are today as irresistible to the middle class as the glamour
of the aristocracy was twenty years ago (see A La Recherche du
Temps Perdu.)  Meanwhile it would be interesting to know what the
true-born working man or woman thinks of the playboys and playgirls
of the educated class who adopt the working-class cause without
sacrificing middle-class capital, or sharing working-class
experience.  'The average housewife', according to Mrs Murphy, Home
Service Director of the British Commercial Gas Association, 'washed
an acre of dirty dishes, a mile of glass and three miles of clothes
and scrubbed five miles of floor yearly.'  (Daily Telegraph, 29
September 1937.)  For a more detailed account of working-class
life, see Life as We Have Known It, by Cooperative working women,
edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies.  The Life of Joseph Wright also
gives a remarkable account of working-class life at first hand and
not through pro-proletarian spectacles.

14.  'It was stated yesterday at the War Office that the Army
Council have no intention of opening recruiting for any women's
corps.'  (The Times, 22 October 1937.)  This marks a prime
distinction between the sexes.  Pacifism is enforced upon women.
Men are still allowed liberty of choice.

15.  The following quotation shows, however, that if sanctioned the
fighting instinct easily develops.  'The eyes deeply sunk into the
sockets, the features acute, the amazon keeps herself very straight
on the stirrups at the head of her squadron... Five English
parlementaries look at this woman with the respectful and a
bit restless admiration one feels for a "fauve" of an unknown
species...

--Come nearer Amalia--orders the commandant.  She pushes her horse
towards us and salutes her chief with the sword.

--Sergeant Amalia Bonilla--continues the chief of the squadron--how
old are you?--Thirty-six--Where were you born?--In Granada--Why
have you joined the army?--My two daughters were militiawomen.  The
younger has been killed in the Alto de Leon.  I thought I had to
supersede her and avenge her.--And how many enemies have you killed
to avenge her?--You know it, commandant, five.  The sixth is not
sure.--No, but you have taken his horse.  The amazon Amalia rides
in fact a magnificent dapple-grey horse, with glossy hair, which
flatters like a parade horse... This woman who has killed five
men--but who feels not sure about the sixth--was for the envoys of
the House of Commons an excellent introducer to the Spanish war.'
(The Martyrdom of Madrid, Inedited Witnesses, by Louis Delaprée,
pp. 34, 5, 6.  Madrid, 1937.)

16.  By way of proof, an attempt may be made to elucidate the
reasons given by various Cabinet Ministers in various Parliaments
from about 1870 to 1918 for opposing the Suffrage Bill.  An able
effort has been made by Mrs Oliver Strachey (see chapter 'The
Deceitfulness of Polities' in her The Cause).

17.  'We have had women's civil and political status before the
League only since 1935.'  From reports sent in as to the position
of the woman as wife, mother and home maker, 'the sorry fact was
discovered that her economic position in many countries (including
Great Britain) was unstable.  She is entitled neither to salary nor
wages and has definite duties to perform.  In England, though she
may have devoted her whole life to husband and children, her
husband, no matter how wealthy, can leave her destitute at his
death and she has no legal redress.  We must alter this--by
legislation (Linda P. Littlejohn, reported in the Listener, 10
November 1937.)

18.  This particular definition of woman's task comes not from an
Italian but from a German source.  There are so many versions and
all are so much alike that it seems unnecessary to verify each
separately.  But it is curious to find how easy it is to cap them
from English sources.  Mr Gerhardi for example writes:  'Never yet
have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious
fellow artists.  I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who,
endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the
few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace.
Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us,
cool our brow, while we bleed.  If their sympathetic understanding
may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for
it!'  (Memoirs of a Polyglot, by William Gerhardi, pp. 320, 321.)
This conception of woman's role tallies almost exactly with that
quoted above.

19.  To speak accurately, 'a large silver plaque in the form of the
Reich eagle...was created by President Hindenburg for
scientists and other distinguished civilians... It may not be
worn.  It is usually placed on the writing-desk of the recipient.'
(Daily paper, 21 April 1936.)

20.  'It is a common thing to see the business girl contenting
herself with a bun or a sandwich for her midday meal; and though
there are theories that this is from choice...the truth is that
they often cannot afford to eat properly.'  (Careers and Openings
for Women, by Ray Strachey, p. 74.)  Compare also Miss E. Turner:
'...many offices had been wondering why they were unable to get
through their work as smoothly as formerly.  It had been found that
junior typists were fagged out in the afternoons because they could
afford only an apple and a sandwich for lunch.  Employers should
meet the increased cost of living by increased salaries.'  (The
Times, 28 March 1938.)

21.  The Mayoress of Woolwich (Mrs Kathleen Rance) speaking at a
bazaar, reported in Evening Standard, 20 December 1937.

22.  Miss E. R. Clarke, reported in The Times, 24 September 1937.

23.  Reported in Daily Herald, 15 August 1936.

24.  Canon F. R. Barry, speaking at conference arranged by Anglican
Group at Oxford, reported in The Times, 10 January 1933.

25.  The Ministry of Women, Report of the Archbishops' Commission.
VII.  Secondary Schools and Universities, p. 65.

26.  'Miss D. Carruthers, Head Mistress of the Green School,
Isleworth, said there was a "very grave dissatisfaction" among
older schoolgirls at the way in which organized religion was
carried on.  "The Churches seem somehow to be failing to supply the
spiritual needs of young people," she said.  "It is a fault that
seems common to all churches."'  (Sunday Times, 21 November 1937.)

27.  Life of Charles Gore, by G. L. Prestige, D.D., p. 353.

28.  The Ministry of Women.  Report of the Archbishops' Commission,
passim.

29.  Whether or not the gift of prophecy and the gift of poetry
were originally the same, a distinction has been made between those
gifts and professions for many centuries.  But the fact that the
Song of Songs, the work of a poet, is included among the sacred
books, and that propagandist poems and novels, the works of
prophets, are included among the secular, points to some confusion.
Lovers of English literature can scarcely be too thankful that
Shakespeare lived too late to be canonized by the Church.  Had the
plays been ranked among the sacred books they must have received
the same treatment as the Old and New Testaments; we should have
had them doled out on Sundays from the mouths of priests in
snatches; now a soliloquy from Hamlet; now a corrupt passage from
the pen of some drowsy reporter; now a bawdy song; now half a page
from Antony and Cleopatra, as the Old and New Testaments have been
sliced up and interspersed with hymns in the Church of England
service; and Shakespeare would have been as unreadable as the
Bible.  Yet those who have not been forced from childhood to hear
it thus dismembered weekly assert that the Bible is a work of the
greatest interest, much beauty, and deep meaning.

30.  The Ministry of Women, Appendix I.  'Certain Psychological and
Physiological Considerations', by Professor Grensted, D.D., pp. 79-
87.

31.  'At present a married priest is able to fulfil the
requirements of the ordination service, "to forsake and set aside
all worldly cares and studies", largely because his wife can
undertake the care of the household and the family...'  (The
Ministry of Women, p. 32.)

The Commissioners are here stating and approving a principle which
is frequently stated and approved by the dictators.  Herr Hitler
and Signor Mussolini have both often in very similar words
expressed the opinion that 'There are two worlds in the life of the
nation, the world of men and the world of women'; and proceeded to
much the same definition of the duties.  The effect which this
division has had upon the woman; the petty and personal nature of
her interests; her absorption in the practical; her apparent
incapacity for the poetical and adventurous--all this has been made
the staple of so many novels, the target for so much satire, has
confirmed so many theorists in the theory that by the law of nature
the woman is less spiritual than the man, that nothing more need be
said to prove that she has carried out, willingly or unwillingly,
her share of the contract.  But very little attention has yet been
paid to the intellectual and spiritual effect of this division of
duties upon those who are enabled by it 'to forsake all worldly
cares and studies'.  Yet there can be no doubt that we owe to this
segregation the immense elaboration of modern instruments and
methods of war; the astonishing complexities of theology; the vast
deposit of notes at the bottom of Greek, Latin and even English
texts; the innumerable carvings, chasings and unnecessary
ornamentations of our common furniture and crockery; the myriad
distinctions of Debrett and Burke; and all those meaningless but
highly ingenious turnings and twistings into which the intellect
ties itself when rid of 'the cares of the household and the
family'.  The emphasis which both priests and dictators place upon
the necessity for two worlds is enough to prove that it is
essential to the domination.

32.  Evidence of the complex nature of satisfaction of dominance is
provided by the following quotation:  'My husband insists that I
call him "Sir",' said a woman at the Bristol Police Court
yesterday, when she applied for a maintenance order.  'To keep the
peace I have complied with his request,' she added.  'I also have
to clean his boots, fetch his razor when he shaves, and speak up
promptly when he asks me questions.'  In the same issue of the same
paper Sir E. F. Fletcher is reported to have 'urged the House of
Commons to stand up to dictators.'  (Daily Herald, 1 August 1926.)
This would seem to show that the common consciousness which
includes husband, wife and House of Commons is feeling at one and
the same moment the desire to dominate, the need to comply in order
to keep the peace, and the necessity of dominating the desire for
dominance--a psychological conflict which serves to explain much
that appears inconsistent and turbulent in contemporary opinion.
The pleasure of dominance is of course further complicated by the
fact that it is still, in the educated class, closely allied with
the pleasures of wealth, social and professional prestige.  Its
distinction from the comparatively simple pleasures--e.g. the
pleasure of a country walk--is proved by the fear of ridicule which
great psychologists, like Sophocles, detect in the dominator; who
is also peculiarly susceptible according to the same authority
either to ridicule or defiance on the part of the female sex.  An
essential element in this pleasure therefore would seem to be
derived not from the feeling itself but from the reflection of
other people's feelings, and it would follow that it can be
influenced by a change in those feelings.  Laughter as an antidote
to dominance is perhaps indicated.

33.  The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs Gaskell.

34.  The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, pp. 67-9, 70-
71, 72.

35.  External observation would suggest that a man still feels it a
peculiar insult to be taunted with cowardice by a woman in much the
same way that a woman feels it a peculiar insult to be taunted with
unchastity by a man.  The following quotation supports this view.
Mr Bernard Shaw writes:  'I am not forgetting the gratification
that war gives to the instinct of pugnacity and admiration of
courage that are so strong in women... In England on the
outbreak of war civilized young women rush about handing white
feathers to all young men who are not in uniform.  This,' he
continues, 'like other survivals from savagery is quite natural,'
and he points out that 'in old days a woman's life and that of her
children depended on the courage and killing capacity of her mate.'
Since vast numbers of young men did their work all through the war
in offices without any such adornment, and the number of 'civilized
young women' who stuck feathers in coats must have been
infinitesimal compared with those who did nothing of the kind,
Mr Shaw's exaggeration is sufficient proof of the immense
psychological impression that fifty or sixty feathers (no actual
statistics are available) can still make.  This would seem to show
that the male still preserves an abnormal susceptibility to such
taunts; therefore that courage and pugnacity are still among the
prime attributes of manliness; therefore that he still wishes to be
admired for possessing them; therefore that any derision of such
qualities would have a proportionate effect.  That 'the manhood
emotion' is also connected with economic independence seems
probable.  'We have never known a man who was not, openly or
secretly, proud of being able to support women; whether they were
his sisters or his mistresses.  We have never known a woman who did
not regard the change from economic independence on an employer to
economic dependence on a man, as an honourable promotion.  What is
the good of men and women lying to each other about these things?
It is not we that have made them'--(A. H. Orage, by Philip Mairet,
vii)--an interesting statement, attributed by G. K. Chesterton to
A. H. Orage.

36.  Until the beginning of the eighties, according to Miss
Haldane, the sister of R. B. Haldane, no lady could work.  'I
should, of course, have liked to study for a profession, but that
was an impossible idea unless one were in the sad position of
"having to work for one's bread" and that would have been a
terrible state of affairs.  Even a brother wrote of the melancholy
fact after he had been to see Mrs Langtry act.  "She was a lady and
acted like a lady, but what a sad thing it was that she should have
to do so!'"  (From One Century to Another, by Elizabeth Haldane,
pp. 73-4.)  Harriet Martineau earlier in the century was delighted
when her family lost its money, for thus she lost her 'gentility'
and was allowed to work.

37.  Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, pp. 69, 70.

38.  For an account of Mr Leigh Smith, see The Life of Emily
Davies, by Barbara Stephen.  Barbara Leigh Smith became Madame
Bodichon.

39.  How nominal that opening was is shown by the following account
of the actual conditions under which women worked in the R.A.
Schools about 1900.  'Why the female of the species should never be
given the same advantages as the male it is difficult to understand.
At the R.A. Schools we women had to compete against men for all the
prizes and medals that were given each year, and we were only
allowed half the amount of tuition and less than half their
opportunities for study... No nude model was allowed to be posed
in the women's painting room at the R.A. Schools... The male
students not only worked from nude models, both male and female,
during the day, but they were given an evening class as well, at
which they could make studies from the figure, the visiting R.A.
instructing.'  This seemed to the women students 'very unfair
indeed'; Miss Collyer had the courage and the social standing
necessary to beard first Mr Franklin Dicksee, who argued that since
girls marry, money spent on their teaching is money wasted; next
Lord Leighton; and at length the thin edge of the wedge, that is the
undraped figure, was allowed.  But 'the advantages of the night
class we never did succeed in obtaining..."  The women students
therefore clubbed together and hired a photographer's studio in
Baker Street.  'The money that we, as the committee, had to find,
reduced our meals to near starvation diet.'  (Life of an Artist, by
Margaret Collyer, pp. 19-81, 82.)  The same rule was in force at the
Nottingham Art School in the twentieth century.  'Women were not
allowed to draw from the nude.  If the men worked from the living
figure I had to go into the Antique Room...the hatred of those
plaster figures stays with me till this day.  I never got any
benefit out of their study.'  (Oil Paint and Grease Paint, by Dame
Laura Knight, p. 47.)  But the profession of art is not the only
profession that is thus nominally open.  The profession of medicine
is 'open', but '...nearly all the Schools attached to London
Hospitals are barred to women students, whose training in London is
mainly carried on at the London School of Medicine.'  (Memorandum on
the Position of English Women in Relation to that of English Men, by
Philippa Strachey, 1935, p. 26.)  'Some of the girl "medicals" at
Cambridge University have formed themselves into a group to
ventilate the grievance.' (Evening News, 25 March 1937.)  In 1922
women students were admitted to the Royal Veterinary College, Camden
Town.  "...since then the profession has attracted so many women
that the number has recently been restricted to 50.'  (Daily
Telegraph, 1 October 1937.)

40 and 41.  The Life of Mary Kingsley, by Stephen Gwyn, pp. 18, 26.
In a fragment of a letter Mary Kingsley writes:  'I am useful
occasionally, but that is all--very useful a few months ago when on
calling on a friend she asked me to go up to her bedroom and see
her new hat--a suggestion that staggered me, I knowing her opinion
of mine in such matters.'  'The letter,' says Mr Gwyn, 'did not
complete this adventure of an unauthorised fiancé, but I am sure
she got him off the roof and enjoyed the experience riotously.'

42.  According to Antigone there are two kinds of law, the written
and the unwritten, and Mrs Drummond maintains that it may sometimes
be necessary to improve the written law by breaking it.  But the
many and varied activities of the educated man's daughter in the
nineteenth century were clearly not simply or even mainly directed
towards breaking the laws.  They were, on the contrary, endeavours
of an experimental kind to discover what are the unwritten laws;
that is the private laws that should regulate certain instincts,
passions, mental and physical desires.  That such laws exist and
are observed by civilized people, is fairly generally allowed; but
it is beginning to be agreed that they were not laid down by 'God',
who is now very generally held to be a conception, of patriarchial
origin, valid only for certain races, at certain stages and times;
nor by nature, who is now known to vary greatly in her commands and
to be largely under control; but have to be discovered afresh by
successive generations, largely by their own efforts of reason and
imagination.  Since, however, reason and imagination are to some
extent the product of our bodies, and there are two kinds of body,
male and female, and since these two bodies have been proved within
the past few years to differ fundamentally, it is clear that the
laws that they perceive and respect must be differently
interpreted.  Thus Professor Julian Huxley says:  '...from the
moment of fertilization onwards, man and woman differ in every cell
of their body in regard to the number of their chromosomes--those
bodies which, for all the world's unfamiliarity, have been shown by
the last decade's work to be the bearers of heredity, the
determiners of our characters and qualities.'  In spite of the
fact, therefore, that 'the superstructure of intellectual and
practical life is potentially the same in both sexes,' and that
'The recent Board of Education Report of the Committee on the
Differentiation of the Curriculum for Boys and Girls in Secondary
Schools (London, 1923), has established that the intellectual
differences between the sexes are very much slighter than popular
belief allows,' (Essays in Popular Science, by Julian Huxley, pp.
62-3), it is clear that the sexes now differ and will always
differ.  If it were possible not only for each sex to ascertain
what laws hold good in its own case, and to respect each other's
laws; but also to share the results of those discoveries, it might
be possible for each sex to develop fully and improve in quality
without surrendering its special characteristics.  The old
conception that one sex must 'dominate' another would then become
not only obsolete, but so odious that if it were necessary for
practical purposes that a dominant power should decide certain
matters, the repulsive task of coercion and dominion would be
relegated to an inferior and secret society, much as the flogging
and execution of criminals is now carried out by masked beings in
profound obscurity.  But this is to anticipate.

43.  From The Times obituary notice of H. W. Greene, fellow of
Magdalen College, Oxford, familiarly called 'Grugger', 6 February
1933.

44.  'In 1747 the quarterly court (of the Middlesex Hospital)
decided to set apart some of the beds for lying-in cases under
rules which precluded any woman from acting as midwife.  The
exclusion of women has remained the traditional attitude.  In 1861
Miss Garrett, afterwards Dr Garrett Anderson, obtained permission
to attend classes...and was permitted to visit the wards with
the resident officers, but the students protested and the medical
officers gave way.  The Board declined an offer from her to endow a
scholarship for women students.'  (The Times, 17 May 1935.)

45.  'There is, in the modern world, a great body of well-attested
knowledge...but as soon as any strong passion intervenes to
warp the expert's judgment he becomes unreliable, whatever
scientific equipment he may possess.'  (The Scientific Outlook, by
Bertrand Russell, p. 17.)

46.  One of the record-breakers, however, gave a reason for record-
breaking which must compel respect:  'Then, too, there was my
belief that now and then women should do for themselves what men
have already done--and occasionally what men have not done--thereby
establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other
women towards greater independence of thought and action...
When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.'  (The
Last Flight, by Amelia Earhart, pp. 21, 65.)

47.  'In point of fact this process [childbirth] actually disables
women only for a very small fraction in most of their lives--even a
woman who has six children is only necessarily laid up for twelve
months out of her whole lifetime.'  (Careers and Openings for
Women, by Ray Strachey, pp. 47-8.)  At present, however, she is
necessarily occupied for much longer.  The bold suggestion has been
made that the occupation is not exclusively maternal, but could be
shared by both parents to the common good.

48.  The nature of manhood and the nature of womanhood are
frequently defined both by Italian and German dictators.  Both
repeatedly insist that it is the nature of man and indeed the
essence of manhood to fight.  Hitler, for example, draws a
distinction between 'a nation of pacifists and a nation of men'.
Both repeatedly insist that it is the nature of womanhood to heal
the wounds of the fighter.  Nevertheless a very strong movement is
on foot towards emancipating man from the old 'natural and eternal
law' that man is essentially a fighter; witness the growth of
pacifism among the male sex today.  Compare further Lord
Knebworth's statement 'that if permanent peace were ever achieved,
and armies and navies ceased to exist, there would be no outlet for
the manly qualities which fighting developed,' with the following
statement by another young man of the same social caste a few
months ago:  '...it is not true to say that every boy at heart
longs for war.  It is only other people who teach it us by giving
us swords and guns, soldiers and uniforms to play with.'  (Conquest
of the Past, by Prince Hubertus Loewenstein, p. 215.)  It is
possible that the Fascist States by revealing to the younger
generation at least the need for emancipation from the old
conception of virility are doing for the male sex what the Crimean
and the European wars did for their sisters.  Professor Huxley,
however, warns us that 'any considerable alteration of the
hereditary constitution is an affair of millennia, not of decades.'
On the other hand, as science also assures us that our life on
earth is 'an affair of millennia, not of decades', some alteration
in the hereditary constitution may be worth attempting.

49.  Coleridge however expresses the views and aims of the
outsiders with some accuracy in the following passage:  'Man must
be FREE or to what purpose was he made a Spirit of Reason, and not
a Machine of Instinct?  Man must OBEY; or wherefore has he a
conscience?  The powers, which create this difficulty, contain its
solution likewise; for THEIR service is perfect freedom.  And
whatever law or system of law compels any other service,
disennobles our nature, leagues itself with the animal against the
godlike, kills in us the very principle of joyous well-doing, and
fights against humanity... If therefore society is to be under
a RIGHTFUL constitution of government, and one that can impose on
rational Beings a true and moral obligation to obey it, it must be
framed on such principles that every individual follows his own
Reason, while he obeys the laws of the constitution, and performs
the will of the State while he follows the dictates of his own
Reason.  This is expressly asserted by Rousseau, who states the
problem of a perfect constitution of government in the following
words:  Trouver une forme d'Association--par laquelle chacun
s'unisant à tous, n'obeisse pourtant qu'à lui même, et reste aussi
libre qu'auparavant, i.e.  To find a form of society according to
which each one uniting with the whole shall yet obey himself only
and remain as free as before.'  (The Friend, by S. T. Coleridge,
vol. I, pp. 333, 334, 335, 1818 edition.)  To which may be added a
quotation from Walt Whitman:

'Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances
and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own
rights that others possess the same.'

And finally the words of a half-forgotten novelist, George Sand,
are worth considering:

'Toutes les existences sont solidaires les unes des autres, et tout
être humain qui présenterait la sienne isolément, sans la rattacher
à celle de ses semblables, n'offrirait qu'une énigme à débrouiller
... Cette individualité n'a par elle seule ni signification ni
importance aucune.  Elle ne prend un sens quelconque qu'en devenant
une parcelle de la vie générale, en se fondant avec l'individualité
de chacun de mes semblables, et c'est par là qu'elle devient de
l'histoire.'  (Histoire de ma Vie, by George Sand, pp. 240-41.)



THE END




Project Gutenberg Australia