Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1914-10-15
Suffrage and Soldiers
BY Edwin D. Mead.


Once In so often nowadays somebody
rises to say that no woman should be
allowed to vote unless she is able and
ready to become a soldier or police
man. and use q gun or a billy upon occa-
sion TO preserve order or defend the state.
We suddenly learn that only potential
fighters are proper citizens, and that the
true state is a latent army. Govern
ment is based on force" is the fashion
able phrase which seems to be giving
very considerable glee to a little coterie
of opponents of woman suffrage. "Elim-
mate from government this element of
force" writes one Of them recently to
Boston newspaper, and its sole excuse
for existence is removed All public func-
lions requiring merely voluntary con-
certed action Of citizens, without force,
can be and are performed by private or
non-governmental agencies"
This notion is to most democratic peo-
pie at this time of day little surprising.
We are accustomed to think that the
conception of the state as the voluntary
cooperation OF the people for promoting
their common ends in an efficient and
adequate manner, as could not be done
individually or by little groups, is the
true conception. This would appear to
be not only an excuse" for the existence
of the state but most modern men would
certainly agree that 1t was its real end
and definition. That governments re-
quire police and military force for vari-
Gus purposes Is unquestionable; nobody
certainly ever heard of woman suffrag-
lists questioning 1t. Boston has a few
thousand policemen, and the United
States has perhaps 100000 soldiers. quite
enough for every need of Its @,0W'OO
people. 1t has many more butchers and
bakers, equally indispensable to every
people and rendering services equally
necessary to all citizens, man and women.
although, in the proper division of labor,
the service, like the police service. is the
service of men. Neither the one thing
nor the other has anything to do with
the voting system or with qualification
for voting.
The curious thing is that it is only
nowadays for the sake of opposing
woman suffrage that this silly conten-
ton has made its appearance Nobody
ever heard eligibility for military service
urged as a condition or qualification for
mans suffrage. There is no nation on
earth where a man is not allowed to vote
because he cannot fight The mere prop
osition to subject voting men to such
test or definition would produce a popu-
lar outcry about military despotlsm from
the very men now urging the test against
women. Yet the only possible excuse or
pretext for such a test belonged to the
military past, when was was often the
regular and almost the chief business of
nations. 1t has no relevancy whatever
to the present, when war has long ceased
to be that No contingency is conceiv-
able when even a 1.-THE Of our able-bod-
led young men would be required for ma
tional defense. If ever such exigencies
should arise as once arose at Harlem and
Leyden, we have no doubt that the
women in the besieged cities of America
would do their part as "manfully" as
those women in Holland.
haye said that no man ever escaped
military service because he was not a
voter, or was allowed to vote because he
was a soldier. 1 wonder how many OF
our people know how many Of our SOL
diers in the civil war were voters? out
of less than 1900 900 who enlisted, more
than 100000 were not 81 years old; there
were about 100000 voters. The millions
were literally boys in blue
BY curious and rather grateful irony
at time when we were hearing fire.
quently that women should not vote be-
cause they are not good fighters, along
came Rudyard Kipling with probably the
worst of his many bad pieces OF dog
gerel, proclaiming that the trouble with
woman is that she is so many kinds of a
fighter, and such a dangerous fighter
THE female is more deadly than the
male" So the Kilkenny cats may be
left to fight 1t out, and destroy each
other, while rational men and women go
ON together in the patient and confident
work of organizing the world upon n
rational basis, which is not the basis Of
battle or the barracks.