BRITISH LEGION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 219, 12 August 1930, Page 11

BRITISH LEGION.

PLACE OF WOMEN IN THE ORGANISATION. The place of women in the organisation provided the subject of a spirited, and at times hilarious, discussion at the concluding session of the annual conference of the British Legion at Cardiff in June. At the invitation of the chairman (Colonel G. R. Crosfield) Lady Edward Spencer Churchill, chairman of the women’s section, addressed the assembly. She said that the women’s section had grown very rapidly, and there were now branches all over the country working in every way to further the interests of ex-Servicemen. She reminded the conference that over 100,000 women served in the War as trained nurses and V.A.D.’s at home and abroad, that 400 died on active servico and many were wounded. In addition, 300,000 worked on the land, over 500.000 were engaged in munitions and another 500,000 on national work of various kinds. So it could be said that women did their best to “keep the home fires burning.” The conference had listened appreciatively and sympathetically to this recital, and the very next business seemed a bit ungracious. This was a resolution tabled by Calverley expressing the opinion that the time was inopportune to review the status and the whole question of the women’s section, and that a census of branches should lie taken on the benefits (or otherwise) derived by branches from the formation of branches of the women’s section. There was vigorous opposition to the resolution, which the chairman said contained two words which were an insult to women, and it was heavily defeated. WOMEN’S SECTION BRANCHES. A further resolution calling upon the executive council to define the relationship between the Legion and the women’s section, and urging that branches of the women’s section should be under the jurisdiction of the Legion branches, was carried. The resolution provoked one delegate to remark, amidloud laughter, that the man’s section had given birth to a female child, and he wanted to know who was 'going to control the baby. The chairman said that all on the national executive were agreed that the women’s section should be .under the control of the Legion. There were, however, certain men’s branches which were not as good as the women’s section, and to put women’s sections, which were run thoroughly well, under men’s branches which were badly run would be very unfair to the women. The women’s executive felt very strongly on this point, and the national executive also felt strongly, and where women’s sections were not behaving as they should towards the men’s branches the executive would deal with them. WAR BOOK STIPULATION. Tho conference agreed, in the absence of the mover, to accept without discussion a resolution standing in the name of the Wood Green and Southgate branch deprecating the publication of war books where the author did not draw upon actual facts and personal experience, and expressing the view that tho late War should in no circumstances be used as a medium for works of fiction.