EQUAL TO ANYTHING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 7 January 1926, Page 10

EQUAL TO ANYTHING.

EUCLID AND THE SEXES. LORD DARLING SUMS UR. ‘•That the emancipation of woman inis oeen accompanied by the progressive degeneration of man.” This was the tempting subject of the debate over which Lord Darling piesided at the University of London Union Society. Introducing the topic, he recalled that as a law student 50 years ago he took part in a debate at * University College, following which Lord Coleridge, who presided, predicted that one day he would sit on the judges’ bench. Summing up tiie debate, in which no vote was taken, Lord Darling said the question had been very well argued on both sides by people wlio obviously did not believe in their own arguments. Alluding to ail argument that women having cut their hair short, men had so degenerated as to wear theirs long, he quoted from ‘‘The Rape of the Lock”: Pope’s Dictum. Great Jove suspends the golden beam in air, And weighs the man’s wits ’gainst the woman’s hair. He was not prepared to say as a result of the debate that, woman having risen, man had fallen, like two buckets in a well. But it appeared to him certainly established that man and woman having now become equal to one another, one only wanted to turn to Euclid to know that now that they were equal to one another, they were equal to anything. Miss Ethel Shand, the only woman student to support the motion, said the fact that women earned their own living nowadays had lessened men’s sense of responsibility, making them grow lax. la7,v, and selfish. Miss Baker (King’s College) said it was merely “spectacular chivalry” for a man to offer a seat to a woman in a railway carriage. Courtesy, if von like, hut not chivalry,” she added.