from a file.

So woman among us became, through a long stretch of time, a chattel among the chattels of the house, whose ignorance and dullness men boasted of — just as some would-be cultivated women today boast of their ignorance of the life of the home, and of all that belongs to this little world in which the great world is enfolded, and on whose pattern it is always shaped!

Then the darkness lifted... and woman came forth from the great shadow — the shadow of ignorance and dullness — into the places of light. And we took it as a good omen: she would repay the nation, within years, for what it had missed through generations. For the age is the age of the atom, not the age of science alone. And it is my conviction that the first steps — despite the setbacks that have befallen the renaissance, setbacks traceable to the raging struggle between woman and reaction on the one hand, and between her and her own self, which has not yet freed itself from the residue of the past nor succeeded in creating a distinct personality — these steps must be followed by further steps, to settle the renaissance upon sound foundations and to aim at definite ends. Otherwise, what profit is there in woman's seeking learning as man sought it — before her — and then amassing diplomas and boasting of titles?

Woman has a message in life, whose first lines nature has traced for her, and whose details the reality of our nation traces for her anew each day. And so it is with man's message! This does not mean that we hold woman and man unequal. No! Woman and man are, for me, equal in rights and in duties; but they are distinct in the message each of them performs. And they are two messages, each completing the other, as each half completes its other half.

The chief thing woman has missed so far, as she prepares herself by learning to carry out her message, is to take care to remain a

"Mother" who raises men — not to become a "man" among the semblances of men.

And the loftiest thing to which the "Mother" can aspire, as she carries out that message, is to make of her sons and daughters

men who are truly men, heroes who are truly heroes.

For salvation — the salvation of our nation — lies in the hands of the mothers today, as Paradise has always lain beneath the feet of the mothers!