Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/134

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ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE SUFFRAGE
131

and of woman, are all intimately bound up with a faithful adherence to this compromise.

But this policy imposes upon those whom it shelters from violence corresponding obligations.

In war non-combatants—not to speak of the wounded on the battlefield—must desist from hostile action on the pain of being shot down like wild beasts. And though an individual non-combatant might think it a patriotic action for him to take part in war, the thoughtful man would recognise that such action was a violation of a well-understood covenant made in the interest of civilisation, and that to break through this covenant was to abrogate a humanitarian arrangement by which the general body of non-combatants immensely benefits.

Exactly the same principle finds, as already pointed out, application when a woman employs direct violence, or aspires to exercise by voting indirect violence.

One always wonders if the suffragist appreciates all that woman stands to lose and all