No real equality--no give and take--in spite of all the suffrage talk.

Their weakness was their tyranny.

Weakness indeed! They were much stronger than men.

God help England when they got the vote! The Greeks said it--Euripides said it.

But, of course, the Greeks have said everything! Hecuba to Agamemnon, for instance, when she is planning the murder of the Thracian King: 'Leave it to me!--and my Trojan women!' And Agamemnon's scoffing reply--poor idiot!--'How can _women_ get the better of men ?' And Hecuba's ghastly low-voiced 'In a _crowd_ we are terrible!'-- [Greek: deinon to plethos]--as she and her women turn upon the Thracian, put out his eyes, and tear his children limb from limb.
But _one_ woman might be quite enough to upset a quiet man's way of living! The moral pressure of it was so iniquitous! Your convictions or your life! It was the language of a footpad.
To pull down the hurdles, and tamely let in Chicksands and his minions--how odious! To part with Elizabeth Bremerton and to be reduced again to the old chaos and helplessness--how still more odious! As to the war--so like a woman to suppose that any war was ever fought with unanimity by any country! Look at the Crimea!--the Boer War!--the Napoleonic Wars themselves, if it came to that! Why was Fox a patriot, and he a traitor?
Let her answer that! And all the time, Elizabeth's light touch upon his will was like the curb on a stubborn horse.