But it was not to be. Our claims were ridiculed or ignored, and now man-made war has swept over Europe like a blight, and we are left to aid our country through the day and to mourn, when the long day's work is done, for our fathers and brothers, our husbands and sons. Yet perhaps the worst is not with those who mourn. The Immortals can sport with them no longer. When the last of Niobe's twelve children had passed, the limits of Latona's vengeance were reached. To have killed the mother too had been a kindness.
The woman whose son or husband has been snatched from her knows the fullness of sorrow, but anxiety for their fate must pass her by, while those of us whose loved ones are on the battlefield would hardly hope for a moment's peace of mind if it were not for the duties that engage our working hours and sometimes earn dreamless sleep. In a wonderful procession that tramped through muddy London under the rain a year ago I saw a great petition by women for the means not only to serve, but to forget.
After all, this claim to national service is no more than was advanced in the old days when access to the heads of the Government was barred and the hooligans of a great city were allowed to give full rein to their impulses. Then our rulers thought they could dispense with women, to-day we are recognised as indispensable. That is all, but it is very much, and it sets me the question that is the title of this brief paper--What has woman lost and what has woman gained?
She has lost much that was dearest to her, much that life is powerless to replace. All the springs of her being have nourished the love that she has given to her dear ones, to the man who was her choice, to the son who fed upon her life. In many cases she has lived almost entirely in her children, for the ties that bind her to the active pleasures of life grow weak in conflict with the powers of maternity. She has forgotten the brief years in which she lived for herself and savoured all the sweets of existence, she has lived in her children, happy chiefly in their happiness, ambitious only for their future and concerned with the struggle for the freedom of her sex less on account of her own generation than on account of that which is to follow. It is woman's _rôle_ to give, it is man's _rôle_ to take, and custom has staled for him the infinite variety of his taking. And now he has taken so much that made life worth living that she seeks an anodyne for her grief in giving him all that is left to give, the labour of her hands.