WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21940, 14 November 1936, Page 3

WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

18PECIAI.LT WBITTEH FOB THE PBESS.) [By, ATALANTA.I ■ Recently I. referred to a meeting of women in Washington which must have marked a milestone in feministic advance, for size, if for no other reason. This was the conference of the Country Women of the world. At the moment of ./riting it was not known that New Zealand had sent a delegate there, but a lull account of the conference has appeare . in the Dannevirke “Evening News,” recording the reception given to our representative, Mrs H. Paterson, of Pahiatua, on her return to her home town. A delijghuu jdurney, taking in Honolulu, Vancouver, ti*e Kocky Mountains, Banff, and Calgary, afforded splendid views of Hawaii and Canada, with a continuous welcome from women’s organisations on this extended route. Canada may well claim to have enlisted women in council to good purpose, being the home of the now famous institutes, which crossed the Atlantic to Britain during the war, and have made their way far and wide since then, as New Zealand has reason to know. Mrs Paterson’s accoimt increased in thrill as she described the journey through the Canadian beautylands and the territory south of the St. Lawrence, replete with history for the student of world movements and the advance of women. She spoke ox the home of Frances Willard as a special shrine of lofty endeavour Frances Willard, the great social reformer, the one woman to be honoured with a statue among those of great Americans in the Capitol of Washington, which, though the heart of America beats there, is not America’s largest city. The invasion of the banded country women caused some flutter. Either the conference grew in transit or heralded itself too modestly. Washington was looking for about 100 delegates from 23 countries, but 7000 women from States as far apart as South Africa, New Zealand, Ceylon, Finland, and Latvia turned up to the rendezvous, Latvia for some reason being chosen to represent the Balkan countries, as well as her own Baltic interests. Washington. it need not be said, was equal to the call, and the enormous delegation was suitably Installed in the huge Constitution Hall of the capital city. I have previously written of the good reception accorded by the President and Mrs Roosevelt to those far-trav-elled guests. “The Country Mouse” In our youth we have all read the instructive tale of the Town Mouce and ■the Country Mouse. If Washington had been expecting a mouse it met with a well-behaved leviathan—a leviathan, moreover, sponsored by no less a body than the Federal Department of Agriculture, which handsomely met its obligations to the farmer’s indispensable mother, wife, and daughter at this initial conference. The gathering, once the official reception and opening exercises were over, got to work in a series of separate roundtable discussions on many questions of immediate appeal to women, Mrs Paterson giving prominence, of course, to her own special ground of health questions and the use of natural resources —a phrase which appeals to the daughters of nationbuilders like ourselves. “Natural resources” covered a good deal for New Zealand’s first white women, north or south, and most of us have heard of the ways they used what came to hand in those rough and ready days. May we be as ready to conserve and enlarge what their labours bought for ourselves! But who founded this novel association? It may well be imagined that the townswoman has enjoyed both an easier and a more ambitious sphere than the isolated units of the country. Not only the pleasures, but the cultural chances of the town have waited on the women whose lot has been cast in city places. Has a revolution been brought about in a night that the country woman has suddenly and' proudly become class-conscious? “Atalanta so far has failed to learn the beginnings of the Country Women of the World, thus constituted. But it is plain that, league or no league, the once silent woman on the land has found herself at last. And not before time. She can claim at least an essential value of her own in opening up untrodden ways, with a strength of character and initiative that comes of self-reliance and solitude. She has had fewer distractions from the straight lines of home duty, and often a power of reading and reflection that put her equal with others steeped in the sociabilities that may or may not widen the mental horizon. Nature has been nearer to her than to dwellers of the man-made town. The Revenges of Time So much of interest and world-con-cern is filling the newspapers that one striking innovation has gone without comment. Twenty-four years ago British women who agitated for the vote were herded with criminals. The other day it fell to a woman M.P., Miss Horsburgh, to move the Address-in-Re-ply to the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament. From the somewhat meagre cablegram that reached us it appeared that she did so with aptness and relevancy, as doubtless her constituents expected. It has almost escaped the country’s memory that another British political surprise was quietly effected in the renaming of our ruling dynasty. A Scottish scholar recently remarked: “No one counts poor prolific Anne as one of that black brood” —i.e.. the Stuarts. But as Anne was married to a good-looking moron cf a Danish prince, there'was undoubtedly a brief break between the Stuarts so-called and the succeeding Guelphs that no one has troubled to fill up. Indeed, it was her sister Mary’s Stuart blood, not her Dutch married name, that secured to England and Europe the safeguarding accession of William of Orange, in danger’s hour. The Guelph Dynasty also “came with a lass and went with a lass,” George I being the grandson of the beautiful Winter Queen, as shambling James I.’s daughter was poetically called. But when Victoria Guelph gave her hand and heart to Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha almost a hundred years ago, she unostentatiously acquired the German name of Wettin. The war of 1914 found George V. newly seated on the throne. Quietly and reasonably as he did all things, he decided that an English King should bear an English name, and changed Wettin to Windsor. That is why the mightiest monarch. op earth to-day, who was never other than “David” in his family circle,, will remain “Edward Windsor” in the clear light of latter history.