understand. Yet it is simple enough. It is compounded of comfort and loyalty.
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Men are curiously loyal. They are loyal to ancient hats and disreputable old friends and to some women. But they are always loyal to each other.
This, I maintain, is the sole reason for alluding to them as the stronger and superior sex. They are stronger. They are superior. They are as strong as a trades union, only more so. They stand together against the rest of the world. Women do not. They have no impulse toward solidarity. They fight a sort of guerilla warfare, each sniping from behind her own tree. They are the greatest example of the weakness of unorganized force in the world.
But this male trades union is not due to affection. It is two-fold. It is a survival from the days when men united for defense. Women didn’t unite. They didn’t need to, and they couldn’t have, anyhow. When the cave man went away to fight or to do the family marketing, he used to roll a large bowlder against the entrance to his stone mansion, and thus discouraged afternoon callers of the feminine sex who would otherwise have dropped in for a cup of tea. Then he took away the rope ladder and cut off the telephone, and went away with a heart at peace to join the other males.
They would do it now, if they could.
But the real reason for their sex solidarity is their terrible alikeness. They understand each
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other. Knowing their own weaknesses, they know the other fellow’s. So they stand by each other, sometimes out of sympathy, and occasionally out of fear. You see, it is not only a trades union, it is a mutual benefit society. Its only constitution is the male Golden Rule—“You stick by me and I’ll stick by you.” “We men must stick together.”
I’ll confess that with a good many women it is, “You stick me and I’ll stick you.”
But that solidarity, primarily offensive and defensive,
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