Virginia Woolf received three separate requests for a guinea--one for a women's college building fund, one for a society promoting employment for professional women, and one to help prevent war.

This book is an answer to these requests--and as Wolfe examines the three causes and points out that they are inseparably the same, she declares a new tactic of feminine purpose.

"She follows two streams of thought until they flow into the same sea; and that end, that finally encompassing wholeness is not merely peace, not merely freedom and equality for race and sex, it is human civilization, a civilization which must be better, sounder....Toward so broad a purpose must we move if wars are to be prevented and the human mind and spirit are to stand erect and fearless in this world." (The New York Times)