to the progress of feminism in Germany. She says: 'In no European country has the woman's rights movement been confronted with more unfavourable conditions; nowhere has it been more persistently opposed. In recent times the women of no other country have lived through conditions of war such as the German women underwent during the Thirty Years War and from 1807 to 1812. Such violence leaves a deep imprint on the character of a nation. Moreover, it has been the fate of no other civilised nation to owe its political existence to a war triumphantly fought out in less than one generation. Every war, every accentuation and promotion of militarism, is a weakening of the forces of civilisation, and of woman's influence. . . . A reinforcement of the women's rights movement by a large Liberal majority in the national assemblies . . . is not to be thought of in Germany. The theories of the rights of man and of citizens were never applied by German Liberalism to woman in a broad sense, and the Socialist Party is not yet in a majority. The political training of the German man has not yet, in many respects, been extended to include the principles of the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man; his respect for individual liberty has not been developed as in England; therefore he is much
