WOMEN AS CURATES

Evening Star, Issue 19328, 14 August 1926, Page 21

WOMEN AS CURATES

POLITICAL EQUALITY IRE STRONGER SEX (By Sm Philip Gibbs, in tho ‘Sunday Chronicle.’) Women are on the more again- All the bright young things are preparing to assert their rights to vote at the same age as the boys, and take an equal share in the government of the country and the salvation of humanity. Women of all ages have been marching lately from Land’s End to John o Groats to declare for no more war and no more war widows. Now another crowd is going to march from tho Thames Embankment to Hyde 'Park to demand equal political rights for two millions of their sisters who have no votes between the ages of twenty and thirty, and more, than that who are over thirty and still voteless •■because they are not householders but live in furnished lodgings or clubs. Hundreds of women teachers, actresses, and professional women of all kinds will be in the procession, because, although a girl may be married at twelve years old and sit in tho House of Commons at twenty-one, and become a barrister, surgeon, or anything she likes before the age of thirty, it is not until that age that she is recognised as a full citizen, without limitations and conditions, to register her vote. ALARMING THE MEN.

All this is rather alarming to men, who still cling to old-fashioned prejudices against women’s political influence, and who remember with a shudder tho shocking things that happened when tho militant suffragettes were on tho war-path. To men like Mr Lloyd George and Lord Oxford and Asquith all that is remembered as a horrid nightmare of tho past. It ended in. victory for tho women, due to their heroic service in time of war, but now it seems as if it were only half a victory, and the women are on the move again f to claim the rest of it—-absolute political equality with their brothers. To the younger generation of women —those who were little girls when the war began—that guerilla warfare of the militant suffragettes led by Mrs Pankhurst, who is now back again—must seem fautastic and _ perhaps a little ridiculous. Surely, in spite of having to wait a bit for their vote, most of them have no sense _of inequality, but recognise that it is their day out in social life, in sport, in all adventure.

Tho world pays them an exaggerated homage. The “ flapper ” gets more publicity, more flattery, than may be quite good for her. Grave and elderly men praise her fearlessness, her physique, her charm. There are no barriers of convention or code against her liberties of soul, or her way of dress. She rides a motor-bike in breeches, and no one gives a glance. _ She rides on the “ peach perch,” as it is called by under-graduates, on adventures of speed with any nice hoy who has a half-clay’s holiday—and Mother Grundy turns in her grave, but does not come to life again.

In her knee-short frock she strides through life well pleased with herself, and ready for any kind of fun. from driving a lorry in a general strike to dancing all night to the nearest jazz band, and by some miracle of youth looking as fresh as paint next morning without need of a paint pot. It is boyhood that tires first and quickest. It is the manhood in this country of ours that seems to have lost something of its old spirit of adventure. Woman are taking tho lead in all kinds of ways, organising themselves into all kinds of associations to get a move on in the things that matter. WOMEN AS RULERS.

There are some friends of mine, philosophers and student of life in a quiet way, who believe that all this feminism is certain to lead to the downfall of our Empire and to tho destruction of society. They believe that women’s assertion of equality has already weakened morality and enfeebled that old virility of political and social Life which made us a great nation.

Personally, I cannot see any sign of this. I do not believe in the natural weakness of women. On tho contrary, I think that women as a whole arc less tolerant than men, less sentimental, and less inclined to compromise. We have been ruled several times by women, and no one can say that Queen Elizabeth, for instance, was a soft and clinging creature under the thumb of some good looking scoundrel, or dominated by tveak sentiment. Queen Victoria was not a lady without a will of her own, and our land and Empire did not decline under her rule. Even the Prince of Wales used to tremble aud wipe the nervous perspiration from his brow when ho had to face this Little Old Lady in Black if she happened to be displeased with him.

During the war it was not the women who were pacifists. The women were fiercer in their hatred than the men who fought, more resolute for vengeance when tho war was done. I remember a little lady in a Belgian town who came up to me after the Armistice and asked whether I was going into .Rhineland with tho Army of Occupation. When I said “yes,” she caught hold of ray belt and whispered to me: “Bo cruel!” she said, “he cruel!” A DANGER. I do not tell that story as a slur upon tho character of women. Probably that poor soul had suffered exceedingly. But I do think that men are mistaken when they ..imagine that women have a weakness and tenderness which unfit them for public life or political opinions. When they have any responsibility of governance they are-often stronger than men in their convictions and acts. That,! indeed, is to my mind the one danger of women’s influence in tho political world. They are not so easygoing ns men, not such compromisers, not such opportunists. They got a passionate conviction, and will walk through every obstacle to carry it out. That is dangerous. Because life, to my mind, is all a matter of compromise, give-and-take tolerenco of tho other fellow’s point of view, not too much insistence ou passionate convictions—which may bo wrong or unwise. Men avoid trouble as much as possible. Women ask for it.

This political equality—what’s wrong with it? To my mind, there is no possible reason in justice why women should not get the vote at the same ago and on tho same conditions as men.

Tho days have gone by when wo men can assume any intellectual or even physical superiority. They can whack us on the tennis court and on the golf course. Some of. them can ride, drive, plough with the strongest of tip, and walk ns off our feet, and take on any job that seemed tho special work of men—as the girls did in tho war. They read the same books, face every problem of life frankly and fearlessly, and laugh at our timidities. They take a strong hand with their parents, and a husband who asked for their obedience should get the booby prize. What they are prepared to give, what they do give, is comradeship on equal terms, and it is enormously better, in my judgment, than those relations between men and women which existed in this country in early Victorian times.