citizen rights. When the State is in danger, when the very liberties in
your possession are imperiled, is, above all, the time to think of duty.
And so, when the war broke out, some of us who, convalescing after our
fights, decided that one of the duties of the Women's Social and
Political Union in war time was to talk to men about their duty to the
nation--the duty of fighting to preserve the independence of our
country, to preserve what our forefathers had won for us, and to protect
the nation from foreign invasion.

There are people who say, "What right have women to talk to men about
fighting for their country, since women are not, according to the custom
of civilization, called upon to fight?" That used to be said to us in
times of peace. Certainly women have the right to say to men, "Are you
going to fight to defend your country and redeem your promise to women?"

Men have said to women, not only that they fight to defend their
country, but that they protect women from all the dangers and
difficulties of life, and they are proud to be in the position to do it.
Why, then, we say to those men, "You are indeed now put to the test.
The men of Belgium, the men of France, the men of Serbia, however
willing they were to protect women from the things that are most
horrible--and more horrible to women than death itself--have not been
able to do it."

It is only by an accident, or a series of accidents, for which no man
here has the right to take credit, that British women on British soil
are not now enduring the horrors endured by the women of France, the
women of Belgium, and the women of Serbia. The least that men can do is
that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word
to women, and to make ready to do his best, to save the mothers, the