Impressions and Comments | Page 5

world is greatly excited, or at all events mildly interested, by the
suffrage movement. But there is not a word in this paper from
beginning to end with the faintest reference to the suffrage, nor is there
anything bearing on any single great social movement of the day in
which, it may seem to us, women are taking a part. Nor, again, is there
anything to be found touching on ideas, not even on religion. There are,
on the other hand, evidently three great interests dominating the
thoughts of the readers of this paper: Clothes, Cookery, Courtship.
How to make an old hat look new, how to make sweetmeats, how to
behave when a man makes advances to you--these are the problems in
which the readers of this journal are profoundly interested, and one can
scarcely gather that they are interested in anything else. Very
instructive is the long series of questions, problems posed by anxious
correspondents for the editor to answer. One finds such a problem as
this: Suppose you like a man, and suppose you think he likes you, and
suppose he never says so--what ought you to do? The answers, fully
accepting the serious nature of the problems, are kindly and sensible
enough, almost maternal, admirably adapted to the calibre and outlook
of the readers in this little world. But what a little world! So narrow, so
palaeolithically ancient, so pathetically simple, so good, so sweet, so
humble, so essentially and profoundly feminine! It is difficult not to
drop a tear on the thin, common, badly-printed pages.
And then, in the very different journal I have with me, I read the
enthusiastic declaration of an ardent masculine feminist--a man of the
study--that the executive power of the world is to-day being transferred
to women; they alone possess "psychic vision," they alone are
interested in the great questions which men ignore--and I realise what
those great questions are: Clothes, Cookery, Courtship.
_August 23._--I stood on the platform at Paddington station as the
Plymouth Express slowly glided out. Leaning out of a third-class

compartment stood the figure that attracted my attention. His head was
bare and so revealed his harmoniously wavy and carefully-tended grey
hair. The expression of his shaven and disciplined face was sympathetic
and kindly, evidently attuned to expected emotions of sorrowful
farewell, yet composed, clearly not himself overwhelmed by those
emotions. His right arm and open hand were held above his head, in an
attitude that had in it a not too ostentatious hint of benediction. When
he judged that the gracious vision was no longer visible to the
sorrowing friends left behind he discreetly withdrew into the carriage.
There was a feminine touch about this figure; there was also a touch of
the professional actor. But on the whole it was absolutely, without the
shadow of a doubt, the complete Anglican Clergyman.
September 2.--Nearly every day just now I have to enter a certain shop
where I am served by a young woman. She is married, a mother, at the
same time a businesslike young woman who is proud of her
businesslike qualities. But she is also pleasant to look upon in her
healthy young maternity, her frank open face, her direct speech, her
simple natural manner and instinctive friendliness. From her whole
body radiates the healthy happiness of her gracious personality. A
businesslike person, certainly, and I receive nothing beyond my due
money's worth. But I always carry away something that no money can
buy, and that is even more nourishing than the eggs and butter and
cream she sells.
How few, it seems to me, yet realise the vast importance in civilisation
of the quality of the people one is necessarily brought into contact with!
Consider the vast number of people in our present communities who
are harsh, ugly, ineradically discourteous, selfish, or insolent--the
people whose lives are spent in diminishing the joy of the community
in which not so much Providence as the absence of providence has
placed them, in impeding that community's natural activity, in
diminishing its total output of vital force. Lazy and impertinent clerks,
stuck-up shop assistants, inconsiderate employers, brutal employees,
unendurable servants, and no less unendurable mistresses--what place
will be left for them as civilisation advances?

We have assumed, in the past, that these things and the likes of these
are modifiable by nurture, and that where they cannot be cured they
must be endured. But with the realisation that breeding can be, and
eventually must be, controlled by social opinion, a new horizon has
opened to civilisation, a new light has come into the world, the glimpse
of a new Heaven is revealed.
Animals living in nature are everywhere beautiful; it is only among
men that ugliness flourishes. Savages, nearly everywhere, are gracious
and harmonious; it is only among