II

The European woman, in spite of her exalted pitch, is living a more or less mechanical life at present.  Even where she has revealed unsuspected creative ability, as soon as her particular task is mapped she subsides into routine.  As a rule she is quite automatically and naturally performing those services and duties for which Nature so elaborately equipped her, ministering to man almost exclusively, even when temporarily filling his place in the factory and the tram-car. Dienen!  Dienen! is the motto of one and all of these Kundrys, whether they realize it or not, and it is on the cards that they may never again wish to somersault back to that mental attitude where they would dominate not serve.

On the other hand civilization may for once prove stronger than Nature.  Thinking women—­and there are a few hundred thousands of them—­may emerge from this hideous reversion of Europe to barbarism with an utter contempt for man.  They may despise the men of affairs for muddling Europe into the most terrible war in history, in the very midst of the greatest civilization of which there is any record.  They may experience a secret but profound revulsion from the men wallowing in blood and filth for months on end, living only to kill.  The fact that the poor men can’t help it does not alter the case.  The women can’t help it either.  Women have grown very fastidious.  The sensual women and the quite unimaginative women will not be affected, but how about the others?  And only men of the finest grain survive a long period of war with the artificial habits of civilization strong upon them.

The end of this war may mark a conclusive revulsion of the present generation of European women from men that may last until they have passed the productive age.  Instead of softening, disintegrating back to type, they may be insensibly hardening inside a mould that will eventually cast them forth a more definite third sex than any that threatened before the war.  Woman, blind victim of the race as she has been for centuries, seldom in these days loves without an illusion of the senses or of the imagination.  She has ceased, in the wider avenues of life, lined as they are with the opulent wares of twentieth century civilization, to be merely the burden-bearing and reproductive sex.  Life has taught her the inestimable value of illusions, and the more practical she becomes, the more she cherishes this divine gift.  It is possible that man has forfeited his power to cast a glamour over all but the meanest types of women.  If that should be the case women will ask:  Why settle down and keep house for the tiresome creatures, study their whims, and meekly subside into the second place, or be eternally on the alert for equal rights?  As for children?  Let the state suffer for its mistakes.  Why bring more children into the world to be blown to pieces on the field of battle, or a burden to their women throughout interminable years?  No!  For a generation at least the world shall be ours, and then it may limp along with a depleted population or go to the dogs.