That would have been the end of our dazzling nobility. We
have everything to gain by the war, and all the chimeras and stupidities
of democracy will be chased from the world for an infinite time."
[10] "Let us be patient," a Japanese is reported to have said lately,
"until Europe has completed her _hara-kiri_."
VIII
FEMINISM AND MASCULINISM
During more than a century we have seen the slow but steady growth of the
great Women's movement, of the movement of Feminism in the wide sense of
that term. The conquests of this movement have sometimes been described
by rhetorical feminists as triumphs over "Man." That is scarcely true.
The champions of Feminism have nearly as often been men as women, and the
forces of Anti-feminism have been the vague massive inert forces of an
order which had indeed made the world in an undue degree "a man's world,"
but unconsciously and involuntarily, and by an instrumentation which was
feminine as well as masculine. The advocates of Woman's Rights have
seldom been met by the charge that they were unjustly encroaching on the
Rights of Man. Feminism has never encountered an aggressive and
self-conscious Masculinism.
Now, however, when the claims of Feminism are becoming practically
recognised in our social life, and some of its largest demands are being
granted, it is interesting to observe the appearance of a new attitude.
We are, for the first time, beginning to hear of "Masculinism." Just as
Feminism represents the affirmation of neglected rights and functions of
Womanhood, so Masculinism represents the assertion of the rights and
functions of Manhood which, it is supposed, the rising tide of Feminism
threatens to submerge.
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