llectual or artistic interest or social
duty. The result is that they swarm in the women's clubs, and waste
their time, listening to bad poetry, worse music, and still worse
lectures on Maeterlinck, Balkan politics and the subconscious. It is
among such women that one observes the periodic rages for Bergsonism,
the Montessori method, the twilight sleep and other such follies, so
pathetically characteristic of American culture.

One of the evil effects of this tendency I have hitherto descanted upon,
to wit, the growing disposition of American women to regard all
routine labour, particularly in the home, as infra dignitatem and hence
intolerable. Out of' that notion arise many lamentable phenomena. On
the one hand, we have the spectacle of a great number of healthy and
well-fed women engage in public activities that, nine times out of ten,
are meaningless, mischievous and a nuisance, and on the other hand we
behold such a decay in the domestic arts that, at the first onslaught of
the late war, the national government had to import a foreign expert to
teach the housewives of the country the veriest elements of thrift. No
such instruction was needed by the housewives of the Continent. They
were simply told how much food they could have, and their natural
competence did the rest. There is never any avoidable waste there,
either in peace or in war. A French housewife has little use for a
garbage can, save as a depository for uplifting literature. She does
her best with the means at her disposal, not only in war time but at all
times.

As I have said over and over again in this inquiry, a woman's
disinclination to acquire the intricate expertness that lies at the
bottom of good housekeeping is due primarily to her active intelligence;
it is difficult for her to concentrate her mind upon such stupid and
meticulous enterprises. But whether difficult or easy, it is obviously
important for the average woman to make some effort in that direction,
for if she fails to do so there is chaos. That chaos is duly visible
in the United States. Here women reveal one of their subterranean
qualities: their deficiency in conscientiousness. They are quite without
that dog-like fidelity to duty which is one of the shining marks of
men. They never summon up a high pride in doing what is inherently
disagreeable; they always go to the galleys under protest, and with
vows of sabotage; their fundamental philosophy is almost that of the
syndi