OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18924, 12 February 1927, Page 14

OBITER DICTA.

(By K.)

''Women generally," Miss Maude Royden says, "Trill hail (he deletion of the word 'obey' from the Marriage Sen-ice." One wonders why. Women never did obey, and never intended to; and one may suspect that a great many of them will be aggrieved by the removal of a command which it was ever their aim and pleasure to disregard. Indeed, the result may be a reaction towards obedience, because there is no fun in disobedience when the Bishops condone it. Of course the female highbrows and mezzo-brows are delighted that the irritating word is to go, for the female highbrow believes—what every other woman knows is not a fact —that woman is a fragile and innocent creature oppressed by brutal Man. And so they are saying that they admire the Bishops, and that the Marriage Service is now lifted to a higher plane. It would be lifted to a still higher plane, one may suppose, if the obligation of obedience were transferred to the trembling bridegroom. It will come to that one day, and nothing is more certain than that Her Grace of Canterbury will pay no heed to the Society for the Protection of Men and Children when it timidly asks for release. '

For a correct statement of the relative positions of Man and Woman one cannot do better than go to Mr Mencken's book "In Defence of Women":

Having abandoned tho mcditcval concept of woman as temptress, the men of tho Nordic race have rovived the correlative medisval conception of woman aa angel, and to bolster up that character they have created for her a vast and growing mass of immunities, culminating in late years in the astounding doctrine that, under the contract of marriage, all the duties be upon the man, and all the privileges appertain to the woman. In part this doctrino has been established by the intellectual enterprise and audacity of woman. Bit by bit, playing upon masculine stupidity, sentimentality, and lack of strategical sense, they have formulated it, developed it, and entrenched it in custom and law. . . . The newly-enfranchised women of every country cherish long programmes of what they call social improvement, and practically the whole of that improvement is based upon devices for augmenting their own relative autonomy and power. The English wife of tradition, so thoroughly a femme couverte, is being displaced by a gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, full of strange new ideas about her rights, and strongly disinclined to submit to her husband's authority, or to devote herself honestly-to the upkeep of his house, or to bear him a biological sufficiency of heirs. v j In New Zealand the movement Ha* culminated in female J.P.'s.

Mr Mencken was running in my head, perhaps, because I have been meeting up with some of the extraeb) from American newspapers which he now prints annually as "Americana." One of his quotations in "Americana, 1920," illustrates England rather than America. It records a movement in England for the creation of a memorial of the animals, birds, and fishes sacrificed in the Great War. Fishes? Yes, the goldfish used in poison gas experinients. Of course it is in religion that America is most American: In California a clergyman announced that he has located Hell on one of the planets (as, indeed, many of us think we ourselves have done now and then)) and Is now lecturing on the problem " How Long will Hell Burnt" We have all heard of the church in Goshen, Indiana, which ex-

his gladioli in sjjwm the Baptist in, wjm told his eonvtatMlmj and the mierosfemifiaM the microscope all§«« the Bible," httttau||l laboratory in ttTffltffll minister said, u wtt§n| tising man. man." A with the remark^'*i,jlfflS should be Jlj of face, and wiUu|j§| premium ham, ritja™ features, as mmZlaffl Him." Again, «lffl| Chautauqua ora(]nf§9| clergyman gave ™*fl| busiuess house: *P|m Father's business u|||f used an Elliott 'WSM if He could l«t*ffis|| imagine, H TWOIniBI ters of St, tadiffiO| ing System had mBMBa I like better, tamg|| setts dancer who ttj§|§ career in Having higher dancer." who said, when idfjn| back in turc, Hon, of Northern woo^^ffl

tish friends literature Trete poems of Robett Slw be of little Rev. N. Webster, &M week I did But these notes, it|p|j plained, are &6tl£'i|j| one merit is thit win tion. Mr "WiebeU^mH