Now this development naturally perturbs and even paralyzes us.
Males, like females, in the course of that old fight between the public
and private house, had indulged in overstatement and extravagance,
feeling that they must keep up their end of the see-saw. We told
our wives that Parliament had sat late on most essential business;
but it never crossed our minds that our wives would believe it.
We said that everyone must have a vote in the country; similarly our
wives said that no one must have a pipe in the drawing room.
In both cases the idea was the same. 'It does not matter much,
but if you let those things slide there is chaos.' We said that
Lord Huggins or Mr. Buggins was absolutely necessary to the country.
We knew quite well that nothing is necessary to the country
except that the men should be men and the women women.
We knew this; we thought the women knew it even more clearly;
and we thought the women would say it. Suddenly, without warning,
the women have begun to say all the nonsense that we ourselves
hardly believed when we said it. The solemnity of politics;
the necessity of votes; the necessity of Huggins; the necessity
of Buggins; all these flow in a pellucid stream from the lips
of all the suffragette speakers. I suppose in every fight,
however old, one has a vague aspiration to conquer; but we never
wanted to conquer women so completely as this. We only expected
that they might leave us a little more margin for our nonsense;
we never expected that they would accept it seriously as sense.
Therefore I am all at sea about the existing situation;
I scarcely know whether to be relieved or enraged by this
substitution of the feeble platform lecture for the forcible
curtain-lecture. I am lost without the trenchant and candid
Mrs. Caudle. I really do not know what to do with the prostrate
and penitent Miss Pankhurst. This surrender of the modem woman
has taken us all so much by surprise that it is desirable to pause
a moment, and collect our wits about what she is really saying.
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