It is very difficult for your attacking bully to imagine that a small State--I mean small numerically, and weak physically--will ever have the courage to stand up and resist the bully when he prepares to attack. The Germans did not expect Belgium to keep them at bay while the other countries involved prepared, but there is absolutely no doubt that the plan was to press through Belgium, to take possession of Paris, and then, having humiliated and crippled France, to cross the Channel and defeat us. There is no doubt that was the plan; it is perfectly clear. And that being so, we owe--civilization owes--to Belgium a debt which it can never repay.
Then we have our duty to our ally, France. How much democracy owes to France! France is the mother of European democracy. There is no doubt about her claim to that. If there had been nothing else worth fighting for in this war, in my opinion that alone would have been worth fighting for, to preserve that spirit and that democracy--which France has given to the world, and which would perish if France were destroyed. The people of France are a people who never have been, and I believe never will be, corrupted in the sense of thinking that material things are of more value than spiritual things. The people of France have always been ready to sacrifice themselves for ideals. They have been ready to sacrifice life, they have been ready to sacrifice money, they have been ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal.
You know the old saying, that men should work and women should weep? That is not true, for it is for all of us to work and for all of us to weep when there is occasion to do so. Therefore, it is because in the French Nation you have splendid qualities combined in both sexes, because the history of the French Nation is so magnificent, because the French Nation has contributed so much to civilization, and so much in art, beauty, and in great qualities, it is our duty to stand by France, and to prevent her being crushed by the oversexed, that is to say, overmasculine, country of Germany.
It is our duty as women to do what we can to help our country in this war, because if the unthinkable thing happened, and Germany were to win, the women's movement, as we know it in Europe, would be put back fifty years at least; there is no doubt about it. Whether it ever could rise again is to my mind extremely doubtful. The ideal of women in Germany is the lowest in Europe. Infantile mortality is very high, immorality is widespread, and, in consequence, venereal disease is rampant. Notice, too, the miserable and niggardly pittance that is being paid to the wives and families of German soldiers, while nothing whatever is being paid to unmarried wives and their children. True security for women and children is for women to have control over their own destiny. And so it is a duty, a supreme duty, of women, first of all as human beings and as lovers of their country, to co-operate with men in this terrible crisis in which we find ourselves.