THE SHAVIAN WIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 259, 3 November 1933, Page 7

THE SHAVIAN WIT.

Refusal to Attend Meeting On Women's Rights. EARLIER ADVOCACY RECALLED. (Received 2 p.m.) LONDON, November 2. Typical, breezy correspondence lias been published in which Bernard Shaw refuses to attend a meeting at Westminster to deal with the question, "Should Married Women Earn?"

Shaw's letter to Mrs. F. PethickLawrence says: "Nothing will induce me to speak at a meeting to demand the rights of women. I have lost no opportunity of giving the cause a lift. My writings and personal vanity would not allow me to be led in triumph by eloquent, militant women, to be exhibited, peeping behind their skirts, to speak out niv litle pieeo in favour of this or that concession, then to be patted on the head as a good little knight-errant and sent home to bed.

"A pretty picture I would cut, at 7.7, demanding the rights of married women. Besides, the significance of the meeting would be entirely spoiled by the crowd that follows me everywhere, not caring two straws whether I am advocating purdali or promiscuity."

He goes on to argue that much more important than adult suffrage was his earlier advocacy that there should be a proportion of women on every governing body. "Don't Mussolini, Hitler and company make you think occasionally that I was right?" he asks. "We now have the spectacle of women's votes keeping women out of Parliament.

"The negro republic of Liberia is reviving the slave trade. What a world!"