With great ceremony at intervals, they
go through the highly superfluous performance of calling each other
liars, as who should say that Queen Anne is dead: and while this
tragical farce continues the question of vital imports and exports is
ignored. Within it there lies the key to the Irish question, for
instance, since no nation can be saved which persistently exports the
best of its life. And in this question also lies the key to a great part
of the woman question and to a great part of the colonial question.
Politicians who have not even discovered yet that trade is a process of
exchange, and who assume that in every bargain someone is being worsted,
pay no heed to the questions what sort of people leave our shores, and
what sort of people enter them. Or rather, as if in order to emphasize
their blindness to fundamentals, they make a point about passing an act
against alien immigration, which merely serves to throw into prominence
our national neglect of this great issue. This is not the time and the
place in which I can deal with it in its entirety, but it must be
referred to in so far as it bears on the proportion of the sexes. Toward
the end of 1909 there was a long correspondence in the _Times_ on the
subject of "Unmarried Daughters." One may print in the text the
admirable letter in which a finger is put upon the heart of the
question. We are told about the incompetence of women to deal with
national affairs, but here we find a woman writing to the _Times_ on a
fundamental matter for the Imperialist, though no member of our Houses
of Parliament has yet given any attention to it.
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