ethically unlawful to do deeds of violence.

She spends her life halting between these two opinions, eternally
shilly-shallying.

She will, for instance, begin by announcing that it can never be
lawful to do evil that good may come; and that killing and inflicting
suffering is an evil. (In reality the precept of not doing evil that
good may come has relation only to breaking for idealistic purposes
moral laws of higher obligation.) She will then go back upon that and
concede that war may sometimes be lawful, and that the punishment of
criminals is not an evil. But if her emotions are touched by the
forcible feeding of a criminal militant suffragist, she will again go
back upon that and declare that the application of force is an
intolerable evil.

Or, again, she will concede that the slaughtering of animals for food
is not an evil, but that what is really unforgivable is the infliction
of physical suffering on animals. And all the time for her, as well as
for man, calves and lambs are being emasculated to make her meat
succulent; wild animals are painfully done to death to provide her
table with delicacies; birds with young in the nest are shot so that
she may parade in their plumage; or fur-bearing animals are for her
comfort and adornment massacred and tortured in traps.

When a man crank who is co-responsible for these things begins to talk
idealistic reforms, the ordinary decent man refuses to have anything
more to say to him.

But when a woman crank holds this language, the man merely shrugs his