Political development is like all other development. We must begin with ourselves, our own consciousness, and clean out our own hearts before we take on the job of putting others straight. So with politics. If we women put our hands to local politics, we must begin with the foundations. After all, central governments only echo local ones; the politician in Washington, if he is a wise man, will always have one eye on his constituency. Let us make that constituency so clean, so straight, so high in its purpose, that the man from home will not dare to take a small, limited view about any question, be it a national or an international one. You must remember that what women are up against is not what they see, but the unseen forces. We are up against generations and generations of prejudice. Ever since Eve ate the apple--but I would like to remind you, and all men, why she ate the apple. It was not simply because it was good for food or pleasant to the eyes: it was from a tree whose fruit would make one wise--“She took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave unto her husband with her and he did eat.” We have no record of Adam murmuring against the fruit--of his doing anything but eat it with docility. In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman--however, we will leave Adam.
Ever since woman’s consciousness has looked beyond the material, man’s consciousness has feared her vaguely; he has gone to her for inspiration, he has relied on her for all that is best and most ideal in his life, yet by sheer material force he has limited her. The Western man has, without knowing it, Westernised the harem mind of the East. I don’t believe he knows it yet, so we must break it to him gently. We must go on being his guide, his mother, and his better half. But we must prove to him that we are a necessary half, not only in private, but in political life. The best way that we can do that is to show him that our ambitions are not personal. Let men see that we desire a better, safer, and cleaner world for our children and their children, and that we believe that it is only by doing our bit, by facing unclean things with cleanliness, by facing wrongs with right, by going fearlessly into all things that may be disagreeable, that we will, somehow, make this a little better world. I don’t know that we are going to do this--I don’t say that women will change the world, but I do say that they can if they want to. Coming, as I do, from the Old World which has seen a devastating war, I cannot face the future without this hope--that the women of all countries will do their duty and raise a generation of men and women who will look upon war and all that leads to it with as much horror as we now look upon a cold-blooded murder. If we want this new world, we can get it only by striving for it; and the real struggle will be within ourselves, to put out of our hearts and of our thoughts, all that makes for war, hate, envy, greed, pride, force, and material ambition.