BERNARD SHAW IN FORM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 275, 3 November 1933, Page 5

BERNARD SHAW IN FORM

Typical Breezy Letter HE IS NO KNIGHT ERRANT (By Tr'egraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) 3, 2.10 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 2. A typical breezy correspondence is published in which Bernard Shaw refuses to attend a meeting at Westminster to deal with the question “Should married women earn!” Shaw’s letter to Mrs Pethick Lawrence says: “Nothing would induce me to speak at a meeting to demand rights for women. I have lost no opportunity of giving the cause a lift in my writings, but my personal vanity will not allow me to be led in triumph by eloquent, militant women and exhibited peeping from behind their skirts to speak out my little piece in favour of this or that concession and then be patted on the head as a good little knight errant, and then sent home to bed. “A pretty picture I should cut at 76 demanding rights for married women! Besides, the significance of the meeting would be entirely spoiled by the crowd that fallows me everywhere, not caring two straws whether I am advocating purdah or promiscuity.” Shaw goes on to argue that much more important than adult suffrage was his earlier advocacy that there should be a proportion of women on every governing body. “Do not Mussolini. Hitler and com panv make you think occasionally that I was right?” he asks. “We now have the spectacle of women’s votes keeping women out of Parliament and the negro republic of Liberia reviving the slave trade. What a world!”