WOMAN, as a citizen, has so far made little definite impression upon public affairs; the nation's politics, to all appearance, is still a masculine preserve. The woman elector who records her vote at the next general election will record it for a man-devised programme, for a party run on masculine traditions traditions as yet scarcely influenced by the new element in citizenship.

Quite apart from inexperience, there are valid excuses for her apathy and lack of initiative. Democracy, all the world over, has lost faith in itself and its methods. Further, the official entry. of women into politics took place at an unfortunate moment; at a moment, that is to say, when the much-demanded vote had declined in value since representative institutions and all that they stand for had practically ceased to exist. While the war lasted, representative institutions lapsed - in fact, if not in law; their methods of criticism, discussion, and compromise being incompatible with the rapidity and secrecy demanded by the national danger, they were (as always) set aside till the national danger had passed. Set aside firmly and inevitably, in accordance with the unwritten provisions of the real 'Social Contract.'

The real 'Social Contract,' by virtue of which governments exist, and human beings submit to their ordinances, is, in all its provisions, a compromise between the will to self-direction and the need for personal security. That we may be reasonably certain of life,

health, and property, that we may sleep sound o' nights without fear of sudden violence, we resign the desirable privilege of doing in all things as we please, of spending all our gains as we will; paying for the security afforded by police protection, decent drains, and the like, by parting with a measure of our pleasant right of selfdirection. Rates and taxes are merely another name for forced labor, forced abstinence, loss of freedom; such forced labor and abstinence being the price exacted for security provided by the State. The fundamental justification of all forms of government lies neither in the Divine Right of Peoples, nor of Kings, but in the power of Peoples, or Kings, to furnish good value in security for the measure of freedom surrendered. And a stable condition of government is the result, not only of reasonable security, but of general conviction on the part of the community that it is not being asked to pay too high a price in loss of self-direction

forced labor and abstinence for the measure of security provided. Security like butter has a higher value in seasons when it is not plentiful; in times of real danger (as during the war) the price exacted for it in loss of self-direction would be refused in days of peace. Free institutions that is to say, our system of Parliamentary representation and criticism were bartered for security in 1914, and bartered without protest or resentment. The power of the purse for which Hampden died, the right of

free speech for which Wilkes fought an oligarchy these and other safeguards of a people's liberties went by the board before the first British soldier had set foot on the quay at Boulogne. For the time being security, threatened, had gone up in price; and political liberties were cheapened — a drug in the market. An immediate change in values had been brought about by the peril of the European war.

We were still suffering from the effects of that change in values when Parliament, in its wisdom, saw fit to grant the franchise to women. A few years earlier, 'Votes for Women' was a cry to rouse partisan passion in adherents and opponents alike; but it is safe to say that at the moment the measure enfranchising women became law of the land, a large proportion of those concerned would have been stirred to far greater emotion by the news that Big Bertha had exploded, or that bacon had gone down threepence. And this lack of immediate enthusiasm or protest, so far from being reprehensible, showed a praiseworthy sense of proportion; food and the destruction of enemy armaments were of far more importance at the moment than the status of women or the ballot box.

If political values have not yet attained their pre-war level, they have altered, considerably, since the day our enfranchisement was granted; and what it imports us to know is, how far the initial and in the circumstances natural indifference of woman to the fact of her citizenship is wearing off? How soon, and after what fashion, will women make themselves felt as a factor in public affairs, not only in those public affairs which definitely concern the province of home and children, but in those general matters which affect all citizens alike? . . . Have they, on such questions, a point of view which will influence and modify the aims of

existing parties? Or, will they merely swell the ranks of existing parties, accepting their masculine tradition?

As regards what may be termed purely feminine politics, there is a fairly definite programme which is supported by feminists, practically all the world over; a programme whose rootdemand and principle is equality of status in matters political and personal; equal suffrage, without 'fancy' discriminations such as that on the ground of age equal rights in marriage and in the guardianship of legitimate children; that is to say, abolition of all legal sanction to the idea of a wife as property. And the programme, where sexual offenses are concerned, may be summed up, briefly, as a demand that the law shall not penalize the offender who happens to be easiest to catch.

. . That simple principle has, so far, guided male legislation on the subject.

On the economic side of the charter is the claim for 'equal pay for equal work'; its application, a demand that the principle shall be carried into practice in the Civil Service; the government, as employer, giving to its fellow employer a lead in the right direction. With this claim is bound up another: that employment in all grades of the Civil Service shall be open to women as to men, the state thus affirming the principle of equality of opportunity.

All these demands have been pressed in the past and are bound to be pressed in the future; for behind some of them, at least such as that for equality of opportunity stands not only the conscious purpose of those who desire the advancement of women and resent their disabilities, but the semi-conscious yet very definite revolt against domesticity in all its forms- the life bounded by the home. The war only brought to a head the distaste of women of every class for duties connected with the household; with the younger genera

tion of women workers, domestic service and private teaching had long been looked on as work fit only for those who could get nothing better. For good or for evil, that fact is bound to color woman's political outlook to an extent that is not yet realized by the man who sees in her a home-loving animal, to be satisfied with measures affecting the welfare of the family. It must be remembered, in fairness, that the home has not only been woman's kingdom - it has been her prison as well; hence there is nothing unnatural

rather the reverse in her eagerness to be free of its duties, to seek her livelihood elsewhere. The reaction, it may be, will wear itself out; but in the meantime, it is a force to be reckoned within the life industrial and social, and, through these, in the life political.

And be it noted that the revolt against domestic careers is not confined to these islands; it would seem to be a characteristic of the women of civilized races. In Austria, a few months ago, I was told of the difficulty of obtaining cooks and housemaids in Austria, where large industry is practically at a standstill, and any sort of living hard to get. The problem may not be so acute as it is here but it is a problem all the same. And the cry in all new countries for domestic help is not only a post-war cry. Nor is the spirit which prompts the objection to household service confined to one sex only; it reveals itself in men in the stubborn refusal to work on the land - a refusal which swells the tale of the unemployed in American cities, while farmers seek in vain for labor, and demand the immigrant who will condescend to toil in the fields. The phenomenon, apparently, results from a growing gregariousness in the race; due partly, perhaps, to our mode of education in crowds - but more largely to the use of machinery. Steam and electricity

are potent herding factors; we live where we can feed the machine, and the machine, in turn, feeds us. Hence, the majority of men and women have learned to dread quiet of all things; they seek to work noisily, in numerous company, to exist in the stir of a crowd.

It may be taken for granted that the natural tendency of the woman of today is to refuse work that is domestic, so long as any other is open to her; and that this tendency, in politics as elsewhere, will eventually clash with the masculine endeavor to keep her in her proper sphere. The clash may be sharp in the near future. As Europe realizes her inability to maintain a pre-war population, and the struggle for life grows keener, very definite efforts will certainly be made to oust women's labor from all industries that are not domestic. Nor is it likely that the process will cease when demand and supply have balanced each other in the domestic service market. Statesmanship, masculine as well as feminine, may have to reckon with an attempt, more or less instinctive, more or less deliberate, to exclude her from any calling that might give her economic independence.

The resulting situation may not be easy to handle. If the war improved the position of the male trade-unionist financially, it also weakened it morally. 'Skilled' trades, under pressure of necessity, were mastered, often with rapidity and ease, by diluted feminine labor; and the fiction that years of a man's life must be devoted to the acquiring of a particular mechanical process was exploded once for all. To the women of every belligerent country has been revealed the fact that in many walks of the life industrial they can do just as well as their brothers; and they cannot be expected to turn down the page of their history on which that ex

perience is written, or recognize, when they need to earn their bread, that the regulations which exclude them from making their living as they will, are anything but harsh and arbitrary. While the male worker, also pressed by the need to earn his bread, is bound to assert his right to a monopoly of the trades he holds and even, as the pressure grows harder, to attempt to enlarge his preserve. . . . Masculine as well as feminine statesmanship will have to take long views on the subject; considering, among other problems, the complicated problem of the birth rate. How far-given need for degiven need for decreasing population is it advisable is it advisable to drive women into matrimony and less reputable forms of dependence on men by depriving them of other means of livelihood?

There are certain current questions on which women, if they were not apathetic toward public affairs, would certainly have made themselves heard. One of these is the housing difficulty; since lack of decent accommodation presses far more hardly on the still considerable body of home-keeping women than it does on the average man. The full wretchedness of overcrowding is borne by the wife and mother. Yet no woman's organization, so far as I know, has ventured on even a polite remonstrance with those who have failed to deliver the necessary goods. The non-party attitude may be carried too far; any representative body of women would have at least the moral right to propose what are known as 'conversations' on the subject with the monopolists of the bricklaying industry. 'Conversations' in which could be set forth with frankness the point of view of that class of consumer which suffers, above all others, from restriction in housing supply.

The omission to make any such move is the more regrettable because

it is plain that legislation in the future will tend more and more to become a matter of arrangement between the interests of organized bodies. In our modern and complicated society, it is inevitable that Parliament should delegate many of its former functions to forms of representation which have made, and are making, themselves a part of the life of the State. Measures affecting particular trades and interests are put forward only after consultation with those interests, Parliament, representing the general public, reserving to itself little but the right of revision and criticism. In the controversy with the building unions, the ex-service man has intervened his interests being plainly affected by refusal to admit him to the trade; but (so far as I know) women's organizations have not yet. pressed their claim for the special consideration which is also due to them. Yet, it is a claim that, put forward, would be upheld by the public sense of justice.

In the same way, it is to be doubted if any considerable body of women has as yet grasped the fact that they have a special right to be consulted in the matter of the hospital system, that the threatened failure of the voluntary hospital concerns women, as a class, even more than it concerns their men. The closing of hospitals means inevitably an increase in the amount of nursing that will have to be done in the home by the average amateur woman, who will suffer, not only by being deprived of proper care in her own times of sickness, but by the extra labor, the work, and worry involved by the sickness of others. . . . The moral right of the housekeeping woman to special consideration and hearing when hospital arrangements are under discussion is so clear and patent that it has, one imagines, only to be stated in order to be frankly admitted; yet it would seem