NOTABLE WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 5

NOTABLE WOMEN.

WORKERS IN THE SOCIAL FIELD. IMPRESSIONS OF BRITISH LEADERS. (By JESSIE MACKAY.) _ In that "harvest of a quiet eye" which _ remains garnered when travel days are t done, one of the weightiest sheaves the < writer brought home was made up of the I impressions gathered of British feminists < met this year. These meetings marked _ in a personal sense a swing back of j i Hope's pendulum towards a balance and j j stability that had seemed for the last j . three years to have dropped out ot erea- : tion. It is not controversial to note | impersonally the complete and obvious . de-feminisation of international post-war i relations, still less is it to note converg- j; ing factors towards a new feminization | of policies and activities which cannot I indefinitely balance on the alleged fence of post-war psychology, but must come I down eventually on the side of recon-, struction or of chaos. ' As a good Australasian and a hopeful ■ Internationalist, one is tempted to out-, run the sequence of time and recail at the outset one pleasant day at the far- . famed Lyceum Club in Piccadilly, where : every member is a woman of achieve-! ment, artistic, philanthropic, administra-. tive, professional, or scientific. After a ' Rip Van Winkle sort of itinerary in the I slumberous hinterland of the United j Kingdom I was being, resuscitated by j those pre-eminent social revivers, Miss. Newcomb and Miss Hodge, who have done so much to weld the best and most constructive in the Britannic States, j Presently the full current of feministic , discourse, pleasantly swirling on as this or that cosmopolitan effluent broke into '.' the main stream, was brought to a pause • as a well-pruned, well-looking, and. attractively-spoken Lyceum member; came to hail my hostesses of the hour.j It .was Mrs. Marguerite Dale, play-writer.; and woman of affairs from Sydney, on j whom the nimbus of a brand new dis- j tinetion was descending. Her name had | been submitted by; the Australian FeJe- | ration of Women Societies to the Com- j mon wealth Prime Minister as one of the | three Australian delegates to the next ] League of Nations Assembly. The first \ news received -after my next Rip Van ! i AVirikle interlude wa*s that-Mrs. Dale had | been duly appointed to this new position. This is the kind of news that heartens up good Premiers and reformers and is a memento mori to lazy, levanting husbands and other peripatetic pests. Mrs. Dale is one of those approachable people who wear officialism with the grace of an opera cloak, not the monumental utility of a sweeping-cape; it was my good fortune to meet her subsequently on club floors, in Maude Royden's church, and, most apropos of the ■hour, at the International Woman Sufrage Alliance Committee in its May session. There the case for linking Australasia with that great network of relief, protection, and welfare organisation was put to the two Antipodeans invited, and the prospect, the privilege, the duty of representation at the coming International Alliance Congress in Rome next May held before us. The Australian women were even then federating to become affiliated with • the Alliance; we are still booted and spurred for. that brave adventure, and must ride to purpose this month and next if we are not to be judged a laggard~Dominion. There are notable faces seen around that committee table, high up in -the

IT.AY.S.A. rooms, Adam Street, Adelph a stone-throw from our own Doiuinio: offices in the Strand. Miss Newcom brings her mellowed experience and th i wonted sunny front of a mighty charitj f Mrs. Trounson, also an ex officio member, being head secretary of the Alliance, lis no stranger, having extended the I ready hand of welcome to the wandering I New Zealander on the moment of • landing. | In the chair sits the elect of Scottish femininity, Cbrystal Macmillan herself, 1 shapely, portly of presence, roseate And I buxom, an Edinburgh Portia, bred to the I law, and wed to the mending of. it. Curiously little is heard of Scottish femin- | ists, though uniformly plenty is beard from them on polling day. But all the I world has heard of those stron<- Scottish 1 internationalists— Miss Macmillan and • Isobel Lady Aberdeen. j It is another London scene that rises I next to memory, a storeyed mansion in rGower. Street, and a study parlour from I which one strong, gallant, beneficent : j hand has been directing, controlling, quickening-the march of the women for ! half a century. In that chair sits Mrs. ■. Garrett Pawectt, erstwhile leader of the 1 non-militant suffrage societies of Britain. One notes the erect figure — short of stature, she has still a certain spring of perennial activity, though past the: allotted span—one regards the plump, j rounded face, crowned with grey hair. and remembers that sad. beautiful, triumphant love story of hers, wed to a blind man who saw leagues further than I the Englishmen of his day, and worked hand-in-hand with his young wife for the , uplift of woman and the race. \ The wind of memory wafts us now to Ireland. High up over busy, notey O'Connell Street sits, the nresidinir senilis of Irish feminism. Mrs. Sheehy Skeffing- ! ton, in her old Franchise Office. How much water has flowed und?> O'Connell Bridge since the day- she and her husband suffered together in Mount joy in the "killing times" of the suffrage strii--gle! Yet here, calm after storm, vivid, handsome, ready, resolute; she sits unbroken, alone, working still for Trish I womanhood. Of feminism, strictly speaking, and apart from relief work in famine districts and in the aftermath of •war, there is little in Ireland, nnd little ' in a sense is needed, for the Irishwoman's _ battle is won. Ireland is pledged to give • with equal hand to son and daughter in the peace to come. Of Mrs. Skeflinj-ton's ' fellow-suffrage worker, Mrs. Despard, sisi ter of Lord French, and srrandest of 1 Ireland's grand old women, T hear much ' these days, but am prevented by ill- , fortune from sis-lit or hearing of this • dauntless champion of the vote and the ' vote's worth. It was London that saw , her put up that memorable fight of hers. when, as a passively resisting citizen, she was despoiled of all but a garret, a bed. and a chair: but she has come now "to \ lay her bones in Ireland." not without preliminary militancies of the spirit that batter hardest against the walls of Jericho. With what are these wnmen to he. allowed to leaven the new international-, ■ ism? The dough of the old is <.our.| [heavy and black on the coals. Some! | new" kitehening we must. have if the Caucasian cupboard is not to be swept as hare as Mother Hubbard's whs.