Conferences Not The Way

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 128, 24 February 1938, Page 5

Conferences Not The Way

Very Little Practical Work Ever Accomplished

MADAME CHIANG KIA-SHEK’S MESSAGE 'J'HE final session of the Women’s International Conference which was held in Sydney recently brought a surprise in the form of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek's special message. It made a sharp contrast to the more optimistic reports to which the conference had been listening.

“When I look at the international situation as it is developing after years of existence of large international women’s organisations,” she wrote, according to the “Sydney Morning Herald,” “I must confess that my. feeling is far from pride. “The world position is so grave that we can no longer afford to congratulate each other on the splendid success that we have achieved internationally. It is imperative that we be frank, honest and effective. I propose that we recognise our failure mercilessly, even' at the expense of our personal pride. We are guilty, every one of us. “If there has been indifference in our hearts, or too strong a personal ambition, or a tendency to follow the line of least resistance, the. beaten track of international conferences, meetings and more meetings, at which long strings of beautiful words are said, but very little practical work is ever accomplished—let us confess that this is not the way to save the world. “Our civilisation is threatened with

Chinese women, she said, had always had considerable power in the by no means small range of the home, but the new Chinese woman was exercising her power in the community. She had obtained advances in educational opportunities, reforms in the laws of divorce and those regarding her property rights, but in one direction—that of the position of women in industry—there had been little improvement. Both day and night shifts were the custom in cotton mills —“and anything worse than- a cotton mill would be hard to imagine.” These shifts were of 12 hours’ duration. Where the woman was a mother as well as a breadwinner, there was on her a burden that was almost intolerable.

extinction. What is happening in China to-day may confront you to-morrow. The forces arrayed against peace are colossal. So long as profits can be derived from war, so long as military aggression is met with indifference on our part, war and all the misery it entails will continue unabated. "Let us create a vacuum round any agressor State that dares to endanger the peace of the world. Let our aim be to' cut the sinews of war and take the profit out of war. Even if we should, at the beginning, be unable to do this on a large scale, let us resolve not to spend a penny that might wander to the aggressor’s war chest.”

The title of the conference. “This Changing World,” must, she thought, have been chosen a long time ago. for in it there was something cheerful, ami hopeful. Now this changing world seemed to be entirely out of control and to be rolling toward self-destruc-tion with breath-taking rapidity. Emphasising the fact that the present situation in China was something quite outside the scope of the conference, and one which she could not discuss, Miss, Eleanor Hinder, an officer of the Shanghai Municipal Council, chose instead to tell her listeners something about the modern Chinese woman.