This woman had learned by sad experience that healthy men will quarrel and thump each other; that these fights put men in the hospital, after breaking her dishes and splattering her tablecloths with blood.

Hating bloodshed, she prevented it by being ever ready to shed blood herself.

She stood for the moral law, but she stood armed and ready.
Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of itself; it needs no fighters to support it.

The man who believes that is ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous.

Right is always trampled down when no fighter upholds it.