If it can only be done through woman's suffrage, then woman's suffrage
must surely come, because, whether British legislators care for the
good of women or not, nature does care, and as the race moves forward
the working woman will have to be protected.

It has been seen over and over again that no band of politicians, nor
powerful men, nor tape-bound State can long defy any advancing good for
the needs of the whole.

Wheter women work or not, they are the mothers of the future; and
because this fact is greater than the sum of all other facts brought
forward by the narrowness and short- sightedness of men, we may safely
believe that, since they _must_ work, nature will see to it that they
work under the most favourable conditions, no matter what rich men have
to go the poorer for it.

Pity is that the hour is so delayed; that narrowness, and selfishness,
and self-aggrandisement still flourish, to the eternal cost of those of
England's mothers who bring weaklings into the world, through the hard
conditions of their enforced labour.

The _true patriot_ of to-day will agitate not only for the highest
possible efficiency in the Navy and Army; but, with no less resolve and
sincerety, for the best possible conditions obtainable for all
women-workers, that the Empire may not later sink suddenly to decay, in
spite of her defences, through the impoverished, feeble, sickly
off-spring who are all the men she has left.

The _true patriot_ will accept the ever-strengthening fact, however
unpalatable, that the development and emancipation of womanhood has