WOMEN IN PRUSSIA

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2492, 19 June 1915, Page 11

WOMEN IN PRUSSIA

THEIE HANDICAPS. ■ I do not know the country in Europe ■where women are treated as tliey are in Germany. Not many countries can vie with the United States in the attention bestowed upon the gentler sex, but, as I have endeavoureu to show, thoy are respected more in every belligerent country than, they are in the one that sought to rule supreme in Europe. Even in Italy, Spam, and Portugal, where women must often work as hard as men, they stand upon 11 secure footing of affeotion and respect. The smaller courtesies, the greater services of life, are theirs, in some definite measure they complete the home. You cannot bring an indictment against a whole nation, and I do not seek to do so. In tens of thousands of German homes the wife and daughters are loved and honoured, but in the rank and file of military circles, even among the men who hold official positions and .boast a certain standing, woman has been dethroned; she is regarded as an encumbrance necessary for the production of further generations of supermen who shall subdue the earthy This attitude of mind reveals itself in the action that speaks louder than words. The toleration and the contempt to which I refer are everywhere apparent. No good-looking woman is safe 1 in Gwmany from the ill-bred stares and comments of the men with whom she must travel in train or.tram; if women enter a theatre or restaurant, their own friends and lelatives do not rise to receive them; they are liable to be elbowed into the road if men walking abreast can occupy the whole of the pavement. The politeness of the few cultured Germans (pardon the discredited_ adjective) merely emphasises the _ boorishness of tho vast majority. It might be that'the German is waiting for women to be officially recognised as human beings to whom some measure of courtesy, oi even of decency, is due. Only when rudeness is ."verboten" will rudeness cease. The country is governed for men by men, and woman, according to the marriage rubric, is actually man's servant. The effect of these conditions upon the morals of the country is deplorable. They give a cachet to vices, even, the most odious, and the rate of illegitimacy —about ten per cent, for the whole Empire—ia about doubled in Berlin, where the military caste is supreme. The morals of the army are the moralß of Berlin, and account not only for the hideous stories published about what has taken place in Belgium and Northern France, but for . the recitals not less appalling that one gathers from_ officers home on leave, who have seen .sights in the area of German occupation that cannot be set down in print. Undoubtedly these stories, if they could reach the heart of Germany, would thrill tens of thousands of honest men with Indignation and disgust; I do not believe for a moment that they represent the inclinations of the whole nation. They are rather the action of that section of the j nation which, while war endures, must have the upper hand, and, during all the years of warlike preparations, has reigned supreme. In Prussia mo woman may organise a union that has political aims; she may not even join one. It is the purpose of the dominant caste to keep woman in subjection; to restrict her activities to the kitchen, the cradle, and the chUrch; even to deny her the mental and .physical development that might tend to lead her to revolt. Woman may find a limited salvation in the conduct of a business; throughout the German Empire not far short of a million women conduct commercial enterprises of one kind or another,'and collectively they strive with some success to /better the physical and moral conditions under which their sisters live. No effort of whioh they have yet been capable has accomplished more than this; their condition of tutelage remains complete. It was Germany's fatal mistake that, not content with dominating its own womenkind and suppressing them whenever and wherever possible, it believed that the rest of the world waa-equally indifferent to the treatment of its mothers, wives, and'daughters. Every known outrage has raised fresh fighters; has strengthened the Allies with the sure force of moral sympathy and encouragement; has thinnea th 6 ranks of those whose sympathies were with a country whose marvellous progress provides so much material for admiration. (Written by the Countess of Warwick in the "Fortnightly Review.") ' .