" PROGRESSIVE WOMANHOOD."

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1909, Page 6

" PROGRESSIVE WOMANHOOD."

To follow you I'm not content unless I know which way you went," was the irreverent addition made by a pensive visitor to one of those old-fashioned metrical inscriptions on a tombstone m which the departed is made to enjoin the. reader to "prepare to follow me." There are many movements assuming the title of "progressive," whidi demand a like common-sense attitude of caution. Would-be leaders there are without number who call loudly, "Follow us !" • "Come and join us .'" Listen to their addresses, read their tracts, and you shall find that whether it be Preferential Tariffs or the Metric System ; State Paper Currency or Votes for Women, it is "pivotal," "central," "paramount"— the one prime essential to progress, the master key of reform. Progress is a good thing, no doubt — swift progress, when the path is plain and unobstructed, and the grade safe ; but there is more than exhilaration, there is intoxication, in swift movement, and the driver needs to have all his sense on the alert. "Whither?" and "Wherefore?" are questions that can not safely be ignored. There is a suggestive item in to-day's cable news from New York. "Elderly mothers and fathers," as a protest against the "new ideas of progressive womanhood," organised a "white carnation" demonstration, and turned out in an enormous procession. In connection with the movement, sermons were preached in many churches on "motherhood." There seems to be here a characteristic touch of the American love of the spectacular, and the symbolism of the white carnation allows scope for the exercise of a poetic imagination ; but behind this public protest there lies a feeling which is deep and widespread, though it usually, when it is expressed, finds other modes of •• expression. Womanhood is still, in English-speaking lands, sound as ever at the core ; but some of its self-appointed revolutionary leaders havo "progressed" to some purpose. "Motherhood" was the text of many sermons. To many fashionable women of our time — to many toiling women, for whom it is easier to find excuse — the idea is distasteful. There is no need' to dilate on a much discussed subject ; but to those who spend time and wealth, and seek to find an outlet for their atrophied affections, on miserable pampered little dogs — to those caught in the whirl of the industrial machine to the loss of family life — the questioning must at times surely come : "'ls this 'progress} worth while?" "Are our leaders safe guides?" We have heard of the "shrieking sisters," of the "revolting daughters." The world has wondered at the vagaries of the "Suffragettes." All in the name of progress, but grievously to the detriment of what is best and highest in womanhood. No doubt the "elderly mothers and fathers" have old-fogey notions, but they have at least fulfilled one duty in their i day and generation. The young folk are wiser — they always are — and some of them are above all things "progressive." But let them look carefully to the direction in which that progress tends.