efend her property or her country in
time of war. In reply to this some partisans of equal suffrage have
thought it necessary to prove that women are physically equal in all
respects to men. But the issues between nations which in the centuries
past it had been believed could be adjusted only by war, by being fought
out (not, of course, to any logical conclusion, but to a result which
showed simply that one party was stronger than the other), are now, in
the great majority of cases, determined by the more reasonable, the more
civilised, method of arbitration.

As a matter of fact, the cause of woman's rights will suffer no harm by
a frank admission that women are not, in general, the peers of men in
brute force. The very nature of the female sex, subjected, as it is, to
functional strains from which the male is free, is sufficient to
invalidate such a claim. A refutation of the physiological objection to
equal suffrage is, however, not hard to find. Even in war, as it is
practised to-day, physical force is of little significance compared with
strategy which is a product of the intellect. In a naval battle for
instance, ships no longer engage at close range, where it is possible
for the crew of one to board the opposing ship and engage in hand to
hand conflict with the enemy; machinery turns the guns and even loads
them; the whole fight is simply a contest between trained gunners, who
must depend for success on cool mathematical computation.

Nevertheless, it is true that under stress or the need of making a
livelihood women in many instances do show physical endurance equal to
that of men. Women who are expert ballet dancers and those who are
skilled acrobats can hardly be termed physiological weaklings. In
Berlin, you may see women staggering along with huge loads on their
backs; in Munich, women are street-cleaners and hod-carriers; on the
island of Capri, the trunk of the tourist is lifted by two men onto the
shoulder of a woman, who carries it up the steep road to the village. In
this country many women are forced to do hard bodily labour ten hours a
day in sweat-shops. In all countries and in all ages there have been
examples of women who, disguised as men, have fought side by side with
the male and with equal efficiency. The case of Joan of Arc will at once
occur to the reader; and those who are curious about this subject may,
by consulting the records of our Civil War, find exciting material in
the story of "Bel