POT-POURRI.

Marlborough Express, Volume LIII, Issue 272, 19 November 1919, Page 7

POT-POURRI.

POLITICAL FEMININITY,

[By Ishmaelite.]

My pen's my tongue; Of it I make a silent speaker,

Blenheim has been honored above its deserts, in that a lady Councillor has been elevated to the seat of the City Fathers. And why not? _It is amusing to listen to the man in the Street unloading the old, old platitudes. "A woman's pla.ee is her home," he says. "She has no business to mix herself up with politics, and such-like public matters." That same individual at his union or his lodge demands a say in the administration, and he certainly has more than a say in the affairs of his home, yet he denies" to a woman, owing to an accident of birth, the right to a say in the making of laws that she has'to observe. What sort of democracy is that? It is to be hoped that Mrs Redwood will have the courage of her opinions and not consent to be quietly sat upon everytime she rises to express them.

INDEPENDENCE,

Time was when a candidate for Parliamentary honors whp dubbed himself Independent was looked at askance by the free and enlightened. He was called all sorts of things, particularly a rail-sitter.

"And the law that the country requires At the hands of her statesmen of sense Is a law to make meat of the liars That sit a rough buck—on the fence."

The Great War has changed even the public view-point upon this questions, as witness the large number of Independents announced as candidates in the coming elections. It looks as though there is a reasonable prospect of an Independent Party running the legislative machinery in the future. And if not, why not? Party does not cut the same ice as it did. and even the Right Hon. W. F. Massey is tired of the pai'ty system. Members of an institution when electing their administrative body do not worry, about the color of their minds upon the questions of the day. They simply vote for the men they consider best fitted for the particular job. Cannot some such simple scheme obtain in politics? All this by way of saying that if such condi-' tions 'Obtained (and things are fast drifting towards that end) the man that could do the best for his constituency in particular and the country as a whole would be the "man for our money" every time.