Nor will woman's influence militate against war because in the future woman
will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller size of
her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when war was
conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now little or
at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might acquire the
skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a Lee-Metford at four
thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, it has not been only
the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent and hid within her
person the gifts that make the supreme general. If our European nations
should continue in their present semi-civilised condition, which makes war
possible, for a few generations longer, it is highly probable that as
financiers, as managers of the commissariat department, as inspectors of
provisions and clothing for the army, women will play a very leading part;
and that the nation which is the first to employ its women so may be placed
at a vast advantage over its fellows in time of war. It is not because of
woman's cowardice, incapacity, nor, above all, because of her general
superior virtue, that she will end war when her voice is fully, finally,
and clearly heard in the governance of states--it is because, on this one
point, and on this point almost alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as
woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the history of human flesh;
she knows its cost; he does not. (It is noteworthy that even Catharine of
Russia, a ruler and statesman of a virile and uncompromising type, and not
usually troubled with moral scruples, yet refused with indignation the
offer of Frederick of Prussia to pay her heavily for a small number of
Russian recruits in an age when the hiring out of soldiers was common among
the sovereigns of Europe.)

In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets might
seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and galleries