Women and War
and officeholders, they will do the better work for this profound and touching belief in their own perfectibility. Or it may be that a perilous self-confidence will—until corrected by experience—lead them astray. These speculations would be of small concern, were it not that the claim to moral superiority, which women advance without a blush, disposes many of them to ignore the hard conditions under which men struggle, and fail, and struggle again. It narrows their outlook, confuses their judgment, and cheapens their point of view.
When a prominent American feminist said smartly that war is the hysteria of men, she betrayed that lamentable lack of perspective which ignorance can only partly excuse. The heartless shallowness of such a speech commended it to many hearers; but of all generalizations it is the least legitimate. There was as little hysteria in the well-ordered, deeply laid plans of Germany as there was in the
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