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THE INDICTMENT
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tradition which it travesties beyond all recognition, has succeeded in affecting modern public opinion with an overpowering sense of the sacrosanctity of human femality as such. It is not content with respect for the ideal of good womanhood but it would fain place on a pedestal the mere fact of femalehood in itself. This is illustrated in a thousand ways. Thus while public opinion tolerates the most bestial and infamous forms of corporal punishment for men in gaols, it will regard the slight chastisement by the medical head of an institution for mental cases, of a girl who is admittedly obstinate and refractory rather than mentally afflicted in the ordinary sense of the term, as "degrading."

Again, in order to sustain its favourite thesis, the intellectual equality of woman with man, it resorts, whenever a plausible case presents itself, to its usual policy of the falsification of fact. Take the instance of Madame Curie. When radium was first discovered in the laboratory of the late Professor Curie we were told that the latter had made the discovery, it being at the same time mentioned that he possessed in his wife a valuable aid in his laboratory work. We were afterwards told that the discovery of radium was the joint work of both, the implication being that the honours were equally divided. Now, Feminist influence has succeeded in getting Madame Curie spoken of