Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 248, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1912 — WOMEN AS NATURAL ENEMIES [ARTICLE]

WOMEN AS NATURAL ENEMIES

Writer Advances Some Good Reasons Why This Unfortunate Condition Jt’ Must Exist. "Tke average woman now begins that study of society which will merge ultimately with the marriage campaign. She makes many discoveries which she admits frankly to herself. She comes to many conclusions,** says Inez Haynes Glllmore in Harper's Bazar, "which sink unnoticed into her subconscious mind. If marriage, for instance, is her natural career, then men are her natural prey. "But unfortunately there are never enough men In her world to go round; and of those from whom she may hope to choose some are much more'desirable than others. Naturally she prefers the desirable ones—-1. e., the *elig!bles.’ But —and here she runs against her first obstacle —every other single woman in her circle has come to the same conclusion. From the Instant she realizes this she must declare war on every other member of her sex. "Men must often wonder at that minute and merciless examination to which, on a first meeting, every woman submits every other woman. Men must often marvel at the power of quick observation which women always develop in these circumstances. This Is only' the swift Interrogation with which a warrior surveys the arms of his opponent. Women are forever discovering and complex weapons In the possession of rivals. And, perhaps, the most terrifying element in the situation is psychological—her sense of bafflement, in that she cannot judge of women for men any more than they can judge of men for her. Every other woman becomes “her enemy. To succeed in her world she must play a lone hand and a cut-throat game.-