BACK TO MEDIEVALISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 162, 11 July 1934, Page 17

BACK TO MEDIEVALISM.

WOMEN IN NAZI GERMANY (By M.H.) It is nut to bo imagined that tlie feminist world would view unmoved the recent volte face of one of its most advanced sections, the German. It has been the most astounding thing that has happened in the feminist movement for many a long day, and even now one feels a sense of incredulity in contemplating the apparent headlong capitulation of millions of women in obeying meekly the command to return to the "pots and pans" of domesticity.

German women before the Nazi era were the envy and admiration of the womanhood of many less fortunate countries. They had achieved a freedom from useless convention, from study clothes, from the heavy German meals, from medieval housing conditions. All over Germany thousands of the younger women "hiked." and adventured with the "YVandervogel"—the Wanderbirds—seeing the wonders and beauties,of Germany and other European countries, and meeting life and adventure as free human beings. They practised the- arts, painting, sculpture, poetry, music, building up a tradition of culture that recognised the best in art forms from medieval to futurist, with zest and enthusiasm. When they married, they planned their families, leaving themselves time and energy for public and social contacts and work. The best all-round citizens, they declared, make the best homemakers, the most understanding and capable mothers.

The German Republic had granted their demands as soon as voiced—they had equality of citizenship; all oilices of State and commerce were open to them. The German Parliament had at times forty or more women members, and hundreds more were prominent and active in local government and adminisi trative positions. All tlie more incredible, then, their reported rapturous support of the Nazi regime, which, thundered sternly— "Women back to the kitchen—leave politics and industry to men! Woman's task is motherhood!" —and required the resignation of married women from State posts (unless the woman was the family breadwinner), with the avowed object of putting women in what was considered the proper place, the kitchen and the nursery. What was their reaction? Overboard went the citizen-mother ideal: overboard went the spaced family ideal; the youth movements, freedom for self-expression. With shining eyes and eager faces, German womanhood rushed back to medievalism. It is all the more tragic because women achieved freedom only by great suffering. The sum total of lives lost in the world's women suffrage campaigns runs into hundreds, and countless victims of imprisoiiment and forcible feeding, are physical wrecks to-day. It is all the more tragic because the quest of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has I>ecn ' jettisoned at the first challenge, and for it lias been substituted "life devoted to the production of population" —the less excluding the greater. It. is all the more tragic because the German "New Woman" has agreed to forget now what she once knew, that over-populated countries socking territorial expansion arc not only -uncomfortable to live in, but, as representative German women have affirmed at International conferences, positively might be a menace to the world's peace. Many feminist critics, both men and women, throughout the world have said caustic, regretful, humorous things about the collapse of feminism. in Germany. Some have said what the little boy said when ho first saw a giraffe: "I don't believe it!" only in this case they say it when they are confronted, not by a sixfoot neck and a hide covered witli camouflages, but with loud announcements that German women hail Hitler and are calling for better and stronger chains, for more and heavier fetters.

"It is understandable," says one Lon:don evitic, "tliat men were captured by tlie fake romance of Hitlerism. Tliey were not asked to go back to anything-, only to be more 'heroic' than ever before." But women? —''Does this back-to-thc-kitchen movement come from the spirit, from the heart, or is it an automatic temporary response to shouted commands?: Is it, .we dare ask with bated breath, because jnst now in Nazi Germany it is unhealthy to back-chat, and shouts that go, as Twecdlcdec said, contrariwise, are apt to be silenced in a good old mediaeval manner?" "I blame women for their own fall to servitude' in Germany," says another writer, ''and I blame them for betraying the cause of women all over the world."

Well, well. If all this is true, let the feminist world outside Germany look to its defences. Luckily it lias good leaders. The first lady in the world's largest English-speaking country is an arch-feminist, the most determined, original, resourceful and beneficent that the White ITouse has ever seen. The British 'Empire's first lady is one whose whole life is a demonstration of the ability of a woman to combine to perfection the triple roles of Queen, mother, and cultured world-citizen.

While prizing what freedom we enjoy through the work and sacrifices of the pioneers, let us realise that the hest defence is sometimes an advance. Tvct it never l>e forgotten that a country cannot he deemed free unless its women are free.