FINDING A VOICE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 73, 28 March 1932, Page 11

FINDING A VOICE

WOMEN AND PACIFIC

"Small as our efforts may seem, it is oaly through the vision and conviction of the individual that the nation, any nation, can find a voice, and we, as New Zealand women, have a God-given commission to do our part, however small, and through this group of the Pan-Pacific Women's Association, we may do it," said Mrs. T. E. Taylor (chairman) speaking at the annual meeting of the New Zealand National Committee of the Pan-Pacific Women's Association on Saturday afternoon "We have a contribution to make to the culture, the government, and the sociology of the Pacific and the Orient that no one but ourselves can make," she proceeded. "We have much to learn from our sisters on both sides of the Pacific, and in giving and taking through international study and research before and at the conferences, we shall most assuredly pave the way amongst the makers of men, for that material and spiritual understanding without which peace and disarmament are impossible. "The women of the world have never been so intensely set upon securing a basis for this understanding. Elizabeth Green (editor of 'Pacific Affairs,' the organ of Pacific relations), in an article in the December issue, written on her way home from the China Conference, says, 'A group of leading women intellectuals (in Japan) has come together for regular discussion of the Manchurian problem in all its phases, particularly endeavouring to understand the Chinese attitude and interests and to make contact with women leaders in China toward that end. One of the foremost scholars of the country, long at the forefront of the nation'a intellectual life, is carrying out an arduous course of public lectures, stressing faith in and adherence to the League of Nations over a period where League attitudes have not been popular la^ official circles in Japan. "Then we have the deputation of Japanese, feminist leaders to the Chines© leaders, the All-Asian women's conference " with its whole emphasis on peace, and the Y.W.C.A. of China seeking some way out, through women's bodies in America and Europe, and hoping ever for peace through/the intervention of the League and the implementation of moral justice. Add to this all that the women of the Western World are doing for disarmament, and surely; oven.if the.materialisation of our ideal is slow in coming, we must not be apathetic or pessimistic. Three thousand years of arbitrament by war cannot be overthrown in a generaOn the motion of Miss Kane, seconded by Miss Melville, a hearty vote of aSamaEion^ 8' *?*" "»«*&* *T