 | University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 |  |
Ballots and Bullets.
If no men were allowed to vote except those who were able and
willing to do military and police duty, women might consistently be
debarred for that reason. But so long as the old, the infirm, the halt,
the lame and the blind are freely admitted to the ballot box, some
better reason must be found for excluding women than the fact that
they do not fight. All men over 45 are exempt from military service,
yet they vote. Col. T. W. Higginson says: "It appears by the record
of the United States Military Statistics that out of the men examined
for military duty during the civil war, of journalists 740 in every
1,000 were found unfit; of preachers, 974; of physicians, 680, of lawyers,
544.
"Grave divines are horrified at the thought of admitting women to
vote when they cannot fight, though not one in twenty of their own
number is fit for military duty, if he volunteered. Of the editors who
denounce woman suffrage, only about one in four could himself carry
a musket; while, of the lawyers who fill Congress, the majority
could not be defenders of their country, but could only be defended."
Again, it must be remembered that some woman risks her life whenever
a soldier is born into the world. Later she does picket duty
over his cradle, and for years she is his quartermaster, and gathers
his rations. And when that boy grows to a man, shall he say to his
mother, "If you want to vote, you must first go and kill somebody?
It is a coward's argument!" Mrs. Z. G. Wallace of Indiana, from
Hur," said: "If women do not fight, they give to the state all its
soldiers." This ought in all fairness to be taken as an offset for the
military service that women do not render. As Lady Henry Somerset
says, "She who bears soldiers does not need to bear arms."
| University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 | |