It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption of
woman's relation to life, that they are "New Women"; and they are at times
spoken of as though they were a something portentous and unheard-of in the
order of human life.

But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today are
of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago ploughed
its march through European forests and morasses beside its male companion;
which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks across the
Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into Switzerland;
which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose priestesses had
their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle for peace or war.
We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never bought and never
sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose realised ideal of
marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in duty and labour; who
stood side by side with the males they loved in peace or war, and whose
children, when they had borne them, sucked manhood from their breasts, and
even through their foetal existence heard a brave heart beat above them.
We are women of a breed whose racial ideal was no Helen of Troy, passed
passively from male hand to male hand, as men pass gold or lead; but that
Brynhild whom Segurd found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who
gave him counsel "the deepest that ever yet was given to living man," and
"wrought on him to the performing of great deeds;" who, when he died,
raised high the funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, "Nor
shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!" We are
of a race of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived
great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on
evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old
blood.