f art!

Men's bodies are our woman's works of art. Given to us power of control,
we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human
relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought
would never come to us as woman, "Cast in men's bodies; settle the thing
so!" Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her
as cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national
relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything
rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last!

This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very
important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on
the mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to
reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle.
The physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is
concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female
must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned
with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the
female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the
few yet important differences between man and woman as such.

The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean,
to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be
borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from
their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the
strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at
war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women
if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to
be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing.
This throws upon woman as woman a war tax, compared with which all that
the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light.

The relations of the female towards the production of human life
influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life.
"It is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!" cries the typical
male of certain races, instinctively. "There is a living thing, it will
die if it is not cared for," says the average woman, almost equally
instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly,
as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she
always knows what she i