FEMINIST FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 252, 24 October 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

FEMINIST FORUM.

HOI'D FAST--HOLD OUT.

A WOMAN STATESMAN.

(By a Feminist Correspondent.)

The issue of an authoritative life of ; Dame. Millicent Garrett Fawcett (Jolrn Mitrray, 15/ net), imperatively (called 'for, and Mrs. Strachey, irhb 'was so long associated' with ■ the- veteran ifemiiiist, was particularly 'fitted 'for tlie ''task, As, Dame, Millicent herself. wr,ote jto Mrs. Strachey: *Tf ever my life' comes •to be .written, I. would rather you did it jthan anyone. Your'knowledge is not mugged lip out of books, but comes jfrom our having worked together, and •been,' in • tight places ..together."

• '.This' is the rfecord of a' l&fig^liftf,"active to' the- very ..last, for Dame Millicent travelled far afield right to the last, year of her- life. :' ' - '•' ' . •

i - A Remarkable - Woman, | Mrs. Strachey. says in the concluding pages of this remarkablewoman's' biography: "In India, as everywhere .else, enfranchisement' was not the whole story,' and Dame Millicent was positive that no stable: solution of any' of the social problems of India could be reached until there had been a radical change in the position of women. And now, in 1928, there were signs of rapid progress in that direction, and the women of India themselves were coming forward so magnificently that she felt profoundly encouraged; It was a thing she had not thought she would live to see. It was perhaps partly this interest and partly her unconquerable energy which made her decide in the. course of this winter to go all. the way to the Far East herself. In January, 1929, she and her sister Agnes sailed for Ceylon, intending to meet there their niece, Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, who was returning from Australia, and to travel back again in her company. 'This voyage was the longest Dame Millicent had ever undertaken, and .her letters from the ship seem to reveal that the sea part of it was a little too much protracted for her liking. She made the best of it, as she always did.;

"'lt is so nice to. be warm without taking any violent steps to become so,' she wrote to one friend; and to another she said: 'You give us credit for activity •we do not deserve, for a sea voyage is a. wonderful and delightful time of rest, with 110 newspapers and no letters, the heads of important news by wireless, and in fact everything to encourage absolute . rest, coupled with good food and the opportunity of seeing places one has never seen before.'

_. .. V ' r Suffrage in Colombo.

"But rest, though it might be what Dame Millicerit needed, was not what she enjoyed. ■ She fretted over the absence of .news, and was proportionately delighted when they reached Ceylon and •found newspapers • and a picturesque women's suffrage,:, deputation-, awaiting them. They had only 12 days in Ceylon before the Australian :bqat ; which they" 'were'"meeting came in, but in those 12 days Dame Millicent managed not only to stay with the president of the Cinga-. lese Suffrage Society, to visit Randy, and to do a lot iyf sight-seeing, but also to attend and speak at a public meeting to help forward the dear, familialcause. 'The people here are on the point of winning women's suffrage,', she wrote to her daughter, .'although they have only'just issued their first annual report, while we were .jn our 62nd year.' From this agreeable, but no doubt exhausting round of activity, the two old ladies were snatched away by the arrival of the boat they were to return on. 'Our .time, was all too short,' Dame Millitent wrote. 'We did not realise before we arrived how much there was to interest us in Ceylon. Ignorance, you see, sheer ignorance.'"

Women Enter Parliament. The second return to Parliament of a Labour Government found Dame Millicent delighted at the increased number of women. "When Miss Bondfield was included in the-Cabinet she wrote at once to express her joy, and she took much delight in speaking of 'the Right Honourable Margaret.' Everything was going even better and faster than she had hoped; how could anyone have believed, 12 years before, that such a tiling could be ?"

To her joy she and her dear sister enjoyed together the public luncheon given in honour of the new members of Parliament by the National Union. "It was a tirihy function for both of them," says Mrs. Strachey, "but a very happy one. There was the Right Honourable Margaret herself, and among her companions Miss Eleanor Rathbone and several others of Dame Millicent's former colleagues of the suffrage days, and there was Lady Astor, who had 'held the fort with a Joan of Arc gaiety and courage,' iu the days, already remote, when women were a novelty in Parliament. Dame Millicent loved to see tilem all and to hear their quick, clear Speeches, and it was not her optimism, but her faith which told her that tb* future of her cause was' Safe in their hands.

Great Leader Passes. "This, the last of Dame Millicent's meetings, was on July 18. Three days later she. confessed to feeling tired when she came back from the Temple Church. The next day she still felt tired and consented to stay in bed. She hardly knew

that c she was ill, but her friend, Dr. Jane Walker, saw that it was so. Her illness increased, gently and quietly, but irresistibly, and on August 5, 1929, she died;" This, from the last pages of a fine biographical study, not so much of the woman, as of the movement for the enfranchisement of woman, Ave give as an example" of the quietly, attractive way in which the book is written. Out of the book itself there emerges the picture of a woman who was as truly a great statesman as any man. Yet the while she threw off no womanly trait and was as daughter, as wife, as mother; everything-.that such .a relationship; demanded and that without stint.' ' Here was a woman, born' in 1847, of that East Anglian . family of . Garretts, whose women were all fervent in the belief that women must be educated and allowed to seek professions, married to a blind man who none the less achieved Government office, and later, when left as Henry Fawcett's widow, devoted her long widowhood to the cause which had always attracted her, even before that historic meeting when John Stuart Mill, as Parliamentary candidate for the City of Westminster, -brought woman's suffiage right into the sphere of practical politics.