And then came the development of a new variety among the
unemployed of the wealthier classes, the "athletic girl." Not every one
could aspire to be an athletic girl, it requires some means, and much
time; but it is there, and it is part of the emancipation movement. The
latest in the field are the movements towards organization of effort,
association on the lines of the German _Frauenbund_, and the French
_Mouvement Feministe_, and beside them, around them, with or without
them, the Women's Suffrage Movement, militant or non-militant. These are
of the rising tide, and each tide makes a difference to our coast-line,
in some places the sea gains, in others the land, and so the thinkers,
for and against, register their victories and defeats, and the face of
things continues to change more and more rapidly.
It seems an ungracious task, unfair--perhaps it seems above all
retrograde and ignorant--to express doubt and not to think hopefully
of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular
disinterestedness and self-devotion. Yet these adverse thoughts are in
the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but
amongst those who have won, and also amongst those who look out upon
it all with undistracted and unbiassed interest; older men, who look
to the end and outcome of things, to the ultimate direction when
the forces have adjusted themselves.
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