FEMINIST FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 24 March 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

FEMINIST FORUM.

KNUDSEN SPEAKING.

MEGAN LLOYD GEORGE.

(By a Feminist Correspondent.)

LONDON, February 6,

I would be really alarmed if I thought K. A. Wieth-Knudsen's thesis were true. But cold reason tells me on reading his book, "Feminism" (Constable), that he is just as wrong as the extreme feminist is who would uphold the thesis that , woman is equal to man in every mental and physical attribute. But as a creature well balanced, even if of the feminine gender, I like to hear both sides, and I pay my readers the compliment of wishing to hear them, too. Here is what Mr. Knudsen concludes at the end of a very long and violent argument. "The white man has come off badly, precisely because he has loved his woman, whether she deserved it or not, more and better than the men of any other race; was indeed the onlv one to reserve for her monogamous, lifelong, practically indissoluble marriage. For what has he got for it? One thing is certain: if the treatment she now gives him—and which, if it develops further in the same direction, will change marriage into a bell upon earth—is the reward he has earned, then he has earned it by his exaggerated, unnatural homage, and his uncalled-for deference to her and her frivolous agitation. And if his intellect now at the eleventh hour does not recognise the true nature and extent of the danger, and oppose it in a sweeping reaction against all this farrago of feminism, pernicious alike to man, woman and child, fatal to culture as no other "movement," a curse and a poison | to all that has been built up in the sweat and blood of our race for the security of mankind's frail life upon ' earth well, then tho white man has i seen his best days. And this time the . break-up will be due to his having carried to excess two of his noblest and 1 | most honourable virtues—his trust in ! woman s good qualities, and his leniency < born of the sense of strength, towards , her weaknesses—till these virtues become vices, amid which his civilisation 1 will languish, to the advantage of many 1 other races, among whom more natural relations between the sexes are still prevalent and contribute more than anything else to give their cultures that < stability which is lacking in ours." r There it ia! Mr. Knudsen, let me add, set out to '. answer a question set him by a Japanese ' professor: "Why do you European men treat and regard your women with such ( respect, often amounting to adoration?" And I have just given his reply. But let us elaborate a little. Hitherto, < he says, it has never been possible to ( give the answer, for the precise reason that the man interrogated always—but ( in vain—instinctively tries to find the t explanation in some characteristics or i superiorities of the white woman; f whereas the truth, hitherto overlooked, is t that the answer is only to be found 1 in a quality peculiar to the white man j himself, a fundamental trait of his character, which certainly distinguishes i him above any other race on earth, but < which, in the civilisations he has founded, \ especially in their periods of decadence, r has already betjn many times abused by r his female partner to a degree that has contributed to, if not brought about, the ruin of these civilisations. Megan Lloyd George. c

Well, Mr. Knudsen has spoken, but I doubt if his words are ahalriTig the ether to a great extent. Indeed, women are entering the political arena more boldly than ever. To-day Miss Megan Lloyd George makes her first political speech in support of a Liberal candidate. To the Liberals this is welcome, for the party has always felt it a pity that no woman Liberal has yet succeeded in entering St. Stephen's. But two other strong candidates are to stand —Mrs. Corbett Ashby, who has never had half a chance in the forlorn hope constituencies which have been all she has had a chance of facing, and Miss Barbara Bliss, who is one of the most promising of the young women in the list, as she is just within the "under 30's" limit. At Cambridge, where she took the historical and economics tripas, she helped after the war to revive tho Cambridge University Liberal Club, and in 1922, soon after coming down from Girton, she was elected to the Executive Commitee -of the Women's National Liberal Federation. She is now hon. secretary of the Liberal Council, and has helped in many Parliamentary by-elections in all parts, of the country. Greatly interested in local government, she stood years ago as a Liberal candidate for the Westminster City Council, and intends to fight again. Miss Bliss will stand for Parliamentary honours at the general election at East Grinstead, in Surrey. Thero she will have some interesting toomen in ber constituency, among them Lady Bryce, f widow of the* historian, and Lady Brixton. Indeed, women are being allowed tol enter the political and economic arena more boldly than ever, and to-day we are celebrating the completion of ten years of the franchise, limited as it is. In retrospect one can see that women never imagined a full decade would pass without the so-called enfranchisement of the flapper. Still, measures of importance to the welfare of women that would formerly have been years in reaching the Statute Book are now passed in as many months. There had been no wide demand for the admission of women to Parliament, but, without pressure from outside, Parliament made them eligible, and at the 1918 election, when women first recorded their votes, the electors in 16 constituencies had the chance of voting for women candidates. The most Spectacular piece of legislation in the next year was the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, 1919, which opened the legal profession to women, made them eligible as magistrates and jurors, and theoretically gave them more equality than they have in fact secured from it. It has, for instance, not secured the admission to the House of Lords of peeresses in their own right, or opened [the Diplomatic Service to women, or given them equality in the Civil Service.