w five Egyptians with my own hand
at Kassassin, where I served as a trooper.

MITCHENER. Lord bless me! But was your sex never discovered?

MRS. BANGER. It was never even suspected. I had a comrade--a gentleman
ranker--whom they called Fanny. They never called ME Fanny.

LADY CORINTHIA. The suffragets have turned the whole woman movement on
to the wrong track. They ask for a vote.

MRS. BANGER. What use is a vote? Men have the vote.

LADY CORINTHIA. And men are slaves.

MRS. BANGER. What women need is the right to military service. Give me a
well-mounted regiment of women with sabres, opposed to a regiment of men
with votes. We shall see which will go down before the other. (rises)
No: we have had enough of these gentle pretty creatures who merely talk
and cross-examine ministers in police courts, and go to prison like
sheep, and suffer and sacrifice themselves. This question must be solved
by blood and iron, as was well said by Bismarck, whom I have reason to
believe was a woman in disguise.

MITCHENER. Bismarck a woman?

MRS. BANGER. All the really strong men of history have been disguised
women.

MITCHENER (remonstrating). My dear lady!

MRS. BANGER. How can you tell? You never knew that the hero of the
charge at Kassassin was a woman: yet she was: it was I, Rosa Carmina
Banger. Would Napoleon have been so brutal to women, think you, had he
been a man?

MITCHENER. Oh, come, come! Really! Surely female rulers have often shown
all the feminine weaknesses. Queen Elizabeth, for instance. Her vanity,
her levity.

MRS. BANGER. Nobody who has studied the history of Queen Elizabeth can
doubt for a moment that she was a disguised man.

LADY CORINTHIA (admiring Mrs. Banger). Isnt she splendid?

MRS. BANGER (rising with a large gesture). This very afternoon I shall
cast off this hampering skirt for ever; mount my charger; and with my
good sabre lead the Anti-Suffragets to victory. (She strides to the
other side of the room, snorting.)

MITCHENER. But I cant allow anything of the sort, madam. I shall stand
no such ridiculous nonsense. Im perfectly determined to put my foot
down.

LADY CORINTHIA. Dont be hysterical, General.

MITCHENER. Hysterical!

MRS. BANGER. Do you think we are to be stopped by these childish
exhibitions of temper. They are useless; and your tears and
entreaties--a man's last resource--will avail you just as little.
I sweep them away, just as I sweep your plans of campaign "made in
Ge