WOMEN ARE CRUEL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 29

WOMEN ARE CRUEL

That women are by nature cruel is the thesis of A. Corbett Smith, r a British iuthor and lecturer, who has asserted that it is widely in evidence not only in group, form (he cites their cries for a knockout at prize-fights) but in. the individual, both npinrter and married woman. «ays the "New York Times."

Adducing other exajnples, Mr. Smith, recalls, in an article in the London "Daily- Chronicle" that the play, "Beau Geste," recently peffqrmed at" His Majesty's Theatre in London, contained a harrowing crucifixion scene. "Responsible critics protested strongly and there was talk of cutting the scene/ he said. "The bos office manager expressed his astonishment at" the large number of women who, before they would book their seats, demanded his assurance that Cue scene was retained.

"Again, it is hardly necessary to affirm that it is women, seven-eighths of the reading public, who support the publication and large sales of certain lurid war books of the day. There are few men ■who can stoniach the obscenities, the Wood and the filth with which these, and other volumes are saturated.

'Or, to take another angle, the harshness arid moral cruelty on the part of many ■women o\-erseers and managers toward girl employees in great business and trading firms baa latterly become proverbial. ■Even, more significant is the domineering behaviour of certain women managers to the jiinior male employees. For here is a. new ; opportunity in our social history. "Now these casual examples, with a hundred more like them, are not just symptoms of the present age. Or, rather, they are only accentuated, because history repeats itself. We face a psychological .'condition of womanhood which is but educed and intensified by existing social conditions. "For it is not disputed, least of all by women, that, compared .with man, woman it both largely inured and insensitive to pain and stiffening, and also is more prone to the infliction of cruelty, mental and ■physical. This, even upon those whom they love.

"Upon the first count, we1- remember that the life of every woman is largely compounded of suffering, while any house aurgeon of a great hospital will testify to the Btoicism of women under a major or

AN AV THOR'S' INDICTMENT

minor operation.. Antf what man could ever face the intensive duties of a hospital nurse?

"Upon the second count, the history o£ specific ages and people is packed with examples of the more Intense, the more refined cruelty of women. One recalls the women Terrorists o£ the French Revolution, who 'revolted even their male colleagues by their barbarity'; the patrician women of Rome during the first and second centuries A.D.; the women of many native races. East and West, to whom is especially given the task of torturing prisoners:—

wounded and lie ..on

Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains," as Kudyard Kipling fcings. "Whenever the balance of the sexes has swung toward the dominance of woman and the degeneration of man. woman instinctively and inevitably, tends to assume and to exaggerate the normally accepted attributes of man. "She has become impatient of his apparent failure, and so she comes increasingly to despise him. Hence her desire to wound. But, with her impulsive outlook,, she makes the cardinal mistake of regarding cruelty, mental or physical, as ian attribute of strength instead of weakness.. . . .

"Justified or not, this outlook by women is perhaps the most deplorable of all phases of our social life to-day. It ruinß the home, it tends to dislocate business and voluntary social effort, and it keeps men in constant antagonism, leading them to retaliate in kind, when they should be seeking and winning sympathy, encouragement,, and comradeship from woman, the sheet-anchor of their hopes and aspirations.

"But no society is static. It must advance or regress. The omens to-day are good. There are many suggestions of a steady swing-back to a happy femininity. Woman's imagined dominance of the moment is a myth. It is built upon self-delusion. To-morrow she will awaken, the balance will adjust itself and, in the words of Pope:—

"If she rules him, never shows she rules. Charms by accepting; by submitting, sways." . .