n will stay in her country, if possible in
her home. All girls, the major part of the young widows (who have
created a panic among the little spinsters) will marry if they can,
not only because marriage is still the normal career of woman but
because of their sense of duty to the State. But that social France
after the war will bear more than a family resemblance to the France
that reached the greatest climax in her history on August second,
nineteen-fourteen, has ceased to be a matter of speculation.
* * * * *
Although I went to France to examine the work of the Frenchwomen only,
it would be ungracious, as well as a disappointment to many readers,
not to give the names at least of some of the many American women who
live in France or who spend a part of the year there and are working
as hard as if this great afflicted country were their own. Some day
their names will be given to the world in a full roll of honor. I do
not feel sure that I know of half of them, but I have written down all
I can recall. The list, of course, does not include the names of
Americans married to Frenchmen:
Mrs. Sharp, Miss Anne Morgan, Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Elisabeth
Marbury, Miss Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Robert Bacon, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt,
Mrs. Whitney Warren, Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, Miss Grace
Ellery Channing, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Carroll of Carrollton, Mrs. Sherman,
Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Miss Holt, Mrs. William H. Hill, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs.
Frederick H. Allen, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Miss Fairchild, Mrs.
Younger, Mrs. Morton Mitchell, Mrs. Fleury, Mrs. Sales, Mrs. Hyde,
Mrs. William Astor Chanler, Mrs. Ridgeley Carter, Miss Ethel Crocker,
Miss Daisy Polk, Miss Janet Scudder, Mrs. Lathrop, Miss Vail, Mrs.
Samuel Watson, Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Miss
Yandell, Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Duryea, Mrs. Depew, Mrs. Marion Crocker,
Miss Mary Eyre, Mrs. Gros, Mrs. Van Heukelom, Mrs. Tarn McGrew, Mrs.
Schoninger, Miss Grace Lounsbery, Mrs. Lawrence, the Princess
Poniatowska, and Isadora Duncan.
BOOK II
FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR
I
THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE
I
It is possible that if the European War had been averted the history
of Feminism would have made far different reading--say fifty years
hence. The militant suffragettes of England had degenerated from
something like real politicians into mere neurasthenics and not only
had lost what little chance they seemed f
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