distribute political power with reference to the "physical basis" which the
"Saturday Review" talks about, it would be a wholly new distribution, and
would put things more hopelessly upside down than did the worst phase of
the French Commune. If, then, a political theory so utterly breaks down
when applied to men, why should we insist on resuscitating it in order to
apply it to women? The truth is that as civilization advances the world is
governed more and more unequivocally by brains; and whether those brains
are deposited in a strong body or a weak one becomes a matter of less and
less importance. But it is only in the very first stage of barbarism that
mere physical strength makes mastery; and the long head has controlled the
long arm since the beginning of recorded time.

And it must be remembered that even these statistics very imperfectly
represent the case. They do not apply to the whole male sex, but actually
to the picked portion only, to the men presumed to be of military age,
excluding the very old and the very young. Were these included, the
proportion unfit for military duty would of course be far greater.
Moreover, it takes no account of courage or cowardice, patriotism or zeal.
How much all these considerations tell upon the actual proportion may be
seen from the fact that in the town where I am writing, for instance, out
of some twelve thousand inhabitants and about three thousand voters, there
are only some three hundred who actually served in the civil war,--a number
too small to exert a perceptible influence on any local election. When we
see the community yielding up its voting power into the hands of those who
have actually done military service, it will be time enough to exclude
women for not doing such service. If the alleged physical basis operates as
an exclusion of all non-combatants, it should surely give a monopoly to the
actual combatants.

THE VOTES OF NON-COMBATANTS

The tendency of modern society is not to concentrate power in the hands of
the few, but to give a greater and greater share to the many. Read
Froissart's Chronicles, and Scott's novels of chivalry, and you will see
how thoroughly the difference between patrician and plebeian was then a
difference of physical strength. The knight, being better nourished and
better trained, was apt to be the bodily superior of the peasant, to begin
with; and this strength was reinforced by armor, weapons, horse, castle,
and all the re