COLONISING WIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 258, 31 October 1929, Page 13

COLONISING WIVES.

BRITAIN'S DEBT TO WOMEN.

WHY FAST EMPIRES FELL.

DAME TALBOT'S CONTENTION.

If the British Empire does not go the way of other great empires of history it will owe it to its women, is the opinion of Dame Meriel Talbot, intelligence officer in the Overseas Settlement Department in London. The reason for the fall of Egypt, Rome and Spain was that their women were not colonieers. In each of these civilisations women occupied a very inferior sphere, and when they accompanied their soldier or statesman husbands abroad they were, more or lees, disgruntled sharers of an exile. Their minds were occupied with the delights of the land they had left; they had little or no interest in the country to which the service of the State had called their husbands. They were mere transients who yearned to get back home. But women of an entirely different character were throughout the last century helping to build up the younger nations of Britain's Empire. "Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa—each of them owes its progress to the courage and steadfastness of the women who worked shoulder to shoulder with their menfolk in making a real home in the country of their adoption/' says Dame Talbot. ■. "These women did not spend their lives in, repining like their sisters of ancient days, in waiting for the opportunity to return to the Old Country. They replanted their lives amid the new surroundings, they made themselves part and parcel of the new worlds. They were empire builders. They settled in another land, but continued to owe loyalty to the land of their birth. "And as these women made homes and gave to their huebands the essential sense of permanency, so they brought up their sons and daughters in a spirit of loyal freedom—a loyalty shared between the new home and the old. And from one generation to another the tradition has passed. "These women were essential to the work of empire-building. They faced long winters and hot summers j they shared tribulations and triumphs; they undertook their part of the day's work with cheerful courage. They were mothers worthy of their children, and they reaped the rewards that only responsible motherhood can bring in its train. Fine women, in very truth, they made secure for future generations the Dominions that they dignified by their self-sacrifice, courage and devotion."