33: "_But her interests are menaced._ Look at the trade
complications; they've all come out of that."

Case 33 has confused trade interests with moral duty; she has confused
two issues: atrocities against neutrals and destruction of American
property. When I tell her this, she states that there is a connection:
that if America had protested against atrocities, the war would have
proceeded on better lines because the Germans would have been
frightened.

I: "How would this have affected the trade question?"

Case 33 does not explain but draws me into a morass of moral indignation
because America protested against trade interference and not against
atrocities. She finally says America had no right to do the one without
the other, which logically is chaos. She also demands to be told what
was the use of America's signing the Geneva Convention and the Hague
Convention. She ignores the fact that these conventions do not bind
anybody to fight in their defense but merely to observe their
provisions. I would add that Case 33 is a well-educated woman,
independent in views, and with a bias toward social questions.

Naturally, where there is a question of love, feminine logic reaches the
zenith of topsy-turvy-dom. Here is a dialogue which took place in my
presence.

_Case 8_

Case 8, who was about to be married, attacked a man who had had a
pronounced flirtation with her because he suddenly announced that he
was engaged.

Case 8: "How can you be so mean?"

The man: "But I don't understand. You're going to be married. What
objection can you have to my getting engaged?"

Case 8: "It's quite different." Nothing could move Case 8 from that
point of view.[2]

[2] Probably owing to woman's having for centuries been taught to regard
the vain aspirations of the male as her perquisites.--THE AUTHOR.

I do not contend that bad logic is the monopoly of woman, for man is
also disposed to believe what he chooses in matters such as politics,
wars, and so forth, and then to try to prove it. Englishmen as well as
Englishwomen find victory in the capture of a German trench,
insignificance in the loss of a British trench; man, as well as woman,
is quite capable of saying that it always rains when the Republicans are
in power, should he happen to be a Democrat; man also is capable of
tracing to a dinner with twelve guests the breaking of a leg, while
forgetting the scores of occasions on which he dined in a restaurant
with twelve ot