THE COURAGE OF WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 30, 4 August 1923, Page 21

THE COURAGE OF WOMEN

A NEW DUE GIVEN.

The courage shown by women in general duriiiff the war is a subject that has baen traversed many times, and has proved an inspiration to miiny peoplo of both sexes, but a newer and equally fina «tory is told by Cyril Stern in the "'Sunday Pictorial." In war time faw modern men or women could be acoused of want of courage—the exceptions proved the rule. Since then statistics prove that other marvellous courage has been exhlbfted by women. There has been, as "everyone knowe, a most distressing aftermath of viai in the. form of lack of: employment, with ita attendant starvation, misery, depression, and suffering of all kinds, jvithin Great Britain, as well as in the other countries immediately affected by this war. Yet the figures recently issued by the Ministry of Health show that the birth rate has been maintained, showing a courage and discipline on the part qf the women. When the moral courajre of a people breaks, one of this signs of the breakage is the increase in the number of suicides, especially among women. "It is interesting," says the writer, "to note what happened in 1921, when millions were unemployed, and ths greatest trade depression erer experienced was at the blackest period. ■ The official figures of suicides in England and •Wales averajred among men 152 annually per million from 1911 to. .1914;" it was 155 in. 1921; while among women the average in that year was 50 per million. °nei£f.? J'6 *°*6 good from-the average in 1914. Such a record is good; it is splendid. ' . Stern then compared thY figures of so T called "violent deaths" by misadventures of .various kinds, a number of. which are under suspicion of bemsr more or less purposeful. Apaih trie average for women is far lower than that of the men. He remarks that there is stilr another .'reliable sign that the morale of woman has not only kept good, but has improved ,und.er trying circumstances of life, arid that is the 'lwssenine- of the death rate of infants "for lack- of-c;ire." ■ In ■other words, there is not in all the official figures so much as a single symptom of weakening or of despair. "On the contrary, everywhere, the splendid virtues of our race have asserted themselves, and turned disaster into vwtory. . Never in her history has the country produced a cleaner bill of moral health than during the ye.ars of her, bitterest trial. It is .'also' the lie direct to every pessimist wlio has dared to suggest that our people could not Bear the strain of lean years. Our people ]iL W0 -jld:fieem' can bear any f^in that ■Frovidencß puta upon them. Their moral courage^ like their physical, is unshakable. There is no virtue which m these days commands such wholehearted admiration, as . "playing the game. _ The writer continues in the fine optimistic strain to show that men are not afraid to be real Christians now —not perhaps the church-going kind but people who know and act up to the fine Christian standard. "The present outcry against-our prison system, against capital punishment, against the abuses of the treatment of. thn insane, against reformatories and similar institutions, is the voice of a new age less sure of its righteousness than the last, far'more eager to practise the virtues of love. W fi are learning how.much can be accomplished by understanding and symWny; na- ecientific faith, as it has been called, is a very remarkable feature of modem life. It may he the foundation of a wonderful edifice:" ■'