e," as the Roman wrote of our old
Northern womanhood.

Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and
white robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were
animated by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer
sunshine and richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight
of a land bathed in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage
richer than any which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we
believe there follows a longer train than any composed of our own race
and people; the sound of the tread we hear behind us is that of all
earth's women, bearing within them the entire race. The footpath, yet
hardly perceptible, which we tread down today, will, we believe, be
life's broadest and straightest road, along which the children of men
will pass to a higher co-ordination and harmony. The banner which
we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard of the old, free,
monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years ago, floated
over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each generation as it
falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, till we plant it
so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till the women of
the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, and no
child enter life that was not born within its shade.

We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand
years, and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the
daughters of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we
still hear the clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck
them together before battle and raised the shout of "Freedom!" In our
dreams it is with us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own
lips! We are the daughters of those men.

But, it may be said, "Are there not women among you who would use the
shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a
door to a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more
lucrative and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the
guise of 'work,' are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure
and self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to
new fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of
self-advertisement and parasitic success?" We answer: There may be
such, truly; among us--but not of us! This at least is true, that we,
ourselves, are seldom