Untitled

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 134, 13 July 1914, Page 6

Lady Stout was closely identified with the militant suffragette movement at Home. She has expressed herself as a strong supporter of the hysterical sisterhood who have shocked the civilised world with their defiant vandalism, and their grave offences against the Crown. Returned to the Dominion, where womc:i possess the suffrage and are mostly contented with their position in our social and economic system, Lady Stout propounds a policy of unrest —'' woman's position in the Dominion . . , was not what it ought to be," she declared at a meeting yesterday afternoon. This apostle of advanced feminism, in her address, talked a lot of nonsense —the sort of nonsense which is the pet conceit of women who are without facts and who are quite uninstructed. in the logical principles underlying the relation of woman to both man and the

world. Lady Stout dragged in- the ancient charge of women having beca kept in subjection so long—it would take another hundred years, she commented, until it was found what they were really fitted for. The average mother, wife, and sister, who lack the masculine ambitions, have had no difficulty in finding out for what they are really fitted. Myriads of womanly women have never experienced any difficulty in this matter. It is only the advanced type, mostly undomesticated, and arrogantly self-opinion-ated, that has deemed the genuine feminine instincts out of date, and desires to appear before the world as splendid examples of emancipated womanhood. We are sorely afraid that Lady Stout, who brings no originality to the subject, will find New Zealand cold to her blandishments. There are thousands oa thousands of queer men, who, strange to relate, are content with those oldfashioned women who believe that their proper sphere is the home rather than the public platform or the ranks of the militant sisterhood. Some of the sex may feel the call to tramp the world, urging on woman to rise and cast off the thrall imposed on her by mere man, but but of England there has been no noticeable revolution. Which makes it apparent that the great majority of the fair sex do not find their chains galling. Lady Stout and her kind may really believe in thenmessage, but they will find it difficult to make converts. The average woman who minds her home and rears a family is not to be lifted out of that oldfashioned groove, and, what is more, she doesn't want to be.