WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21726, 7 March 1936, Page 3

WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

Upxciax.lt Trxmsx vox wx »»»».) IBy •'ATALANTA.”]

The eyes. pf ■ the Empire ate still intent upon the throne. The slightest changes in Royal habitude are still chronicled with interest. I wonder how many of my readers have ponr dered specially on one obvious feature of novelty, namely, the absence of a queen consort to inaugurate‘the inevitable court reactions of a curiously changeful age—using the word “reaction,” of course, in no ulterior, sense. Our new King is happy in that Queen Mary’s influence will ever manifest itself on wise, proved lines. But it remains to be seen how much of her strenuous role of the last quarter of a century , the Queen will desire to retain. Again, the King is happy in the support which in any case the widowed Queen is sure to receive from the all-popular Duchess of York. The destiny of the Duchess in a day we all hope is very far distant will stabilise any innovations a loved daughter-in-law may be encouraged to make. It is hardly to be supposed that the Countess of Harewood, retiring even in youth, and now reported to be deeply and successfully engrossed in rearing her young sons, will greatly change the quiet tenor of her way. All this, however, is at the moment mere speculation. But the few cases• in which English history parallels a situation undoubtedly rare, are not without interest for readers of to-day. I do not remember whether Queen Matilda had the misfortune to witness any part of the disgraceful reign of her son, William Rufus. The brief and tragic episode of little Edward V., invisible for three months, and then murdered in the Tower by order of his wicked uncle, Richard Crookback, was as .queenless as might be. Dim and fated is the pathetic figure of Edward VI., the gentle, ailing son of polygamous Henry VIII., succeeding his father at 10 and leaving the throne at 16 to his unloved and unlovable half- ’ sister, Mary. Edward’s own mother; Jane Seymour, died at his birth. Quecnship was a word unsafe to whisper before and after Henry’s death. Any influence the widowed Queen Catherine Parr might have possessed must have been discounted by her speedy remarriage. Charles 11. ascended the throne a bachelor, of no repute, but speedily shared at least the shadow of it with a neglected consort, Catherine of Braganza, There remained the brief season of single life spent by George 111. after his accession, doubtless shadowed by his reactionary mother, that fatal Princess of Wales, whose reiterated “Be a King, George,’’ cost England the American colonies and more than a century’s hope of peace with Ireland. Certainly a dispiriting record, , entirely alien to the present situation. In Qoecnless Places Let us turn from a chat on queenship to a modern note on a woman who has made her name in a place where queens have been summarily abolished. ’ A laudatory article by Ruby Rich on Madame Alexandra Kollantai appears in a recent issue of "Dawn,” and, as Madame Kollantai represents a governing phase of life, in the Soviet to-day, it is but fitting to preface the talk with a glimpse of feminism in Tsarist Russia. Strange to say, in a country so divorced from freedom then and later, women of even half a century back had attained a certain measure of enlargement, a kind of emancipation, in pre-Soviet Russia. True, they went nearly as often as men ta Siberia for loving their country better thap themselves; they shared in savagt* punishments and egregious sentences,-like that of practically life-long imprisonment im-* posed on Catherine Breshkovsky for the crime of teaching peasants to read. But the culture-loving Slav, from the Tsar downwards, found it hard to deny wife and daughter the intellectual Joys he had made his own. Women of the upper and middle classes pres-, sed unhindered into the Russian universities while yet the hinges of Oxford’s door creaked unsociably, and Cambridge utterly refused to drag its foot out of the sour clay which so reminded the witty Cambridge donna, Rose Macaulay, of “Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men.” This forged • a ready bond between men and women when the fundamental questions of universal citizenship had to be faced in Russia, as in Mid* Western Europe. Those who have read pre-war international reports in English suffrage papers have noted an almost Joyous impetuosity in the reports from then well-known Russian feminists. They were up against tyrannies, but not tyrannies which greatly differentiated between men and women. When, late in 191 7, the Bolshevik revolution became the order of.life in Russia, nothing in the reports, then current impressed British feminists more than the utter silence of the women whose names had been at least as familiar as those of the repressive Mediterranean countries, Spain, France and Italy. It was taken for .granted that the Bolsheviks had killed, their own women leaders, and certainly those names have perished out of memory to-day. Well, no one says “Bolshevik” now, and whatever came to those women, they certainly left some vocal daughters behind them. Quite as convincing -is the recent evidence from Geneva, since M. Litvinoff has taken there a stand on women-questions seldom seen before, save from Scandinavia. This is a heartening sign for every loyal League woman. We are rolling the chariot along. “Atalanta” hastens to state that she shares no romantic illusions about the general rosiness of life in Soviet Russia. She feels the island-passion for that Anglo-Geltic-Saxon ideal of freedom which Russia may attain, but has not yet got. Nevertheless, one may rest on the certainty of full emancipation for lands whose women share whatever measure of freedom men have received. Trust the countrywomen of Catherine Breshkovsky for that. A Daughter of Revolution All this is a ponderous beginning to a brief note on a Russian woman long in the world's eye—Alexandra Kollantai, as the Australian correspondent. Ruby Rich, saw her last November at Geneva. A “vivacious little woman with bobbed hair—greyish-brown—in a black Empire coat.” This, she told an enquirer, was Madame Kollantai, Russian Ambassador to Sweden, an orator of convincing power, and, as many have found, a woman of compelling charm. She is a grandmother now, but keeps fresh the vim, the Joy of living, and the* unquenchable loyalty to humanity which in her very girlhood turned her from the sheltered, ease into which she was bom into the stem and strenuous fight which alone wins freedom for-the downtrodden, be it * serf or woman. True, before Alexandra’s day, an idealistic Tsar thought Russia saved when he freed the serfs from their Old and bitter thraldom. But in all that went to build up that new foundation since, Alexandra Kollantai has borne her part with voice and pen, not unrewarded at last by an admiring country. Not all have seen this intrepid, milling, little woman with the idealising eye of Ruby Rich, and “Atalanta” recalls passing on by-gone impressions of a mixed character—certainly, also, another spelling of her name. But views and etymology alike can change on fuller acquaintance, and the fact that Alexandra Kollantai has successfully represented her country in Norway, Mexico and Sweden is a good passport at Geneva and many other centres of activity in searching days like these, y