Alex's mother smiled. "A quick, sharp fight is the best and clears up
things. I would rather be a rebel any time than a slave. But of
course it is easy for me to talk! I have always been treated like a
human being. Perhaps it is just as well that she did not come. Old
Hans has long generations back of him to confirm him in his theory
that women are intended to be men's bondservants and that is why they
are made smaller; it will all take time--and other things. The trouble
has been with all of us that we have expected time to work out all of
our difficulties, and it won't; there is no curative quality in time!
And what I am most afraid of is that we will settle down after the
war, and slip right back into our old ways,--our old peaceful
ways,--and let men go on ruling the world, and war will come again and
again. Men have done their very best,--I am not feeling hard to
them,--but I know, and the thoughtful men know, that men alone can
never free the world from the blight of war; and if we go on, too
gentle and sweet to assert ourselves, knitting, nursing, bringing
children into the world, it will surely come to pass, when we are old,
perhaps, and not able to do anything,--but suffer,--that war will
come again, and we shall see our daughters' children or our
granddaughters' children sent off to fight, and their heart-broken
mothers will turn on us accusing eyes and say to us, 'You went through
all this--you knew what this means--why didn't you do something?' That
is my bad dream when I sit knitting, because I feel hard toward the
women that are gone. They were a poor lot, many of them. I like now
best of all Jennie Geddes who threw the stool at somebody's head. I
forget what Jennie's grievance was, but it was the principle that
counts--she had a conviction, and was willing to fight for it. I never
said these things--until I got this." She still held the letter, with
its red inscription, in her hand. "But now I feel that I have earned
the right to speak out. I have made a heavy investment in the cause of