eloquently as they use it. They
demand equality of education and opportunity, but they do not want to
be men. Far be such a desire from their minds. They mean to be
something much better. To what a pass have men brought the world, they
ask? How much better would manners and morals and politics be in the
hands of women! They repel with indignation the taunt that women have
no right to govern the State because their bodies are too weak to
defend it. They point out with a gleam of sense and justice that the
mother of children does serve the State in a supremely important way;
and for that matter they are willing to take many State duties on
their shoulders, and to train for them as arduously and regularly as
men train for the wretched business of killing each other. They will
not mate with those poor things--modern men--under the existing
marriage laws. They refuse to be household beasts of burden a day
longer. Life, life to the dregs with all its joys and all its
responsibilities, is what they want, and love if it comes their way.
But not marriage. Young Siegfrieds they ask for, young lions. Here one
bewildered reader rubbed her eyes; for she had just heard Siegfried
and the Goetterdaemmerung again, and sometimes she reads in the
_Nibelungenlied_; and if ever a man won a woman with his club, by
muscle seemingly, by magic really, but anyhow by sheer bodily
strength, was not that man Siegfried? and was not the woman
Bruennhilde? And what does the Siegfried of the Lied say when his wife
has failed to keep a guard on her tongue--

"Man soll so Frauen ziehen," sprach Siegfried, "der Degen,
Das sie ueppig Reden lassen unterwegen.
Verbiet es deinem Weibe; der meinen thu' ich's auch.
Ich schaeme mich, wahrlich um solchen uebermuethigen Brauch."

And then, just as if he was one of those Volga-Kalmucks admired by
Herr Riehl, he beats poor Kriemhilde black and blue.

"Das hat mich bald gereuet," so sprach das edle Weib;
"Auch hat er so zerblaueet deswegen meinen Leib!
Dass ich es je geredet, beschwerte ihm den Muth:
Das hat gar wohl gerochen der Degen tapfer und gut."

Yet here is the last development in women, the woman who refuses as an
outrage both the theory of masculine superiority and the fact so
evident in Germany of masculine domination, here is the
self-constituted superwoman calling as if she was Eve to the primaeval
male. It may be perverse of me, but my imagination refuses to behold