THE PROTECTION OF MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11950, 26 April 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PROTECTION OF MEN.

[BY TOIiTTNOA,] That -named organisation, the Society for the Protection of Women and Children and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has had its annual meeting. His Excellency the Governor presiding,'and has been shrewdly told by our Viceroy that the neglect of children and not cruelty to them is what is wrong in this part of the world. Which exhibition of common-sense has caused in an unnumbered lot of Buffering hearts the anxious hope that His Excellency might be induced to lend his countenance to a Society for the Protection of Men. It any man wishes to earn the gratitude of thousands here is an opportunity.

Somehow or other, gentle Woman generally puts that brute beast Man into a false position. It is a little way she has got, and the strangest part of it is that in order to get on the soft side of her we usually endorse her special pleading and agree with her that our sex is a bad lot. It is always the wicked husband, the villainous lover, the shocking son, who is the target for the epithets and denunciations of philanthropic organisations. He was a bold fellow, our Governor, to hold that neglect" had more to answer for than " cruelty," for the lifeblood of much Christian activity is the belief that society is full of male scoundrels, who cut fingers off their children for fun. and amuse their drunken hours by throwing knives at prayerful wives and mothers, and of other male wretches who have to be watched whenever a mail steamer is going out lest they sail away and leave Mary lamenting. But we never hear of the cruelties from which men suffer, and rarely of the fair ladies who march oil' with the furniture and without taking the family. Yet honour and shame, my friends, from no sex rise! Men and women are six of one and half a dozen of the other, if not more. •>

As far as direct cruelty is concerned there can be no doubt whatever that Woman takes the blue ribbon. The annals of crime show that for cold, vindictive, inhuman rejoicing in the Buffering of a fellow-creature the. championship is held by women. That same wonderful and unalterable persistence which makes the love and devotion of a woman so superhuman to most men also make the hatred and malignity of a woman equally astounding. The average man has no such qualities, for good or for evil. Why should he? He doesn't need them.

Man goes out to limit meat for his family : he keeps off all assailants ; he wants to lie down and rest when he returns from hunting. The " good provider" is still the ideal husband; the lad who promises to be that is still the mark for all the. lasses' smiles ; the worthless. one, who leaves to want his womenkind and his young ones, is still the " niddering" whom all despise. Rarely is it in man's nature to be cruel. Even when he is stern and severe at home it is usually because the incompetency of the mother makes him play there a part for which he is not naturally fitted. The daughters commonly understand him best and humour himas why should he not be humoured, seeing that his energies are taken up in the hunting of food, and that his working part of the natural partnership is complete when he has brought home venison. Primitive! Fair lady of fsahion, beneath our tailoring is genus homo, fighting when full grown for a long-haired mate against all competitors, fighting to win her, fighting to house her, fighting to feed her, fighting to clothe her, fighting to feed and clothe and rear her younglings—then dying content. Any variation from this is not even skin deep. It is not even tattoo. It is only paint. Men do occasionally try to skulk from this duty of theirs. That is "neglect." Pillory them for it as they deserve, brand them on the right cheek, ear-mark then*; give them a ball and chain, anything you like, for there is no excuse, and no ordinary man will make it for them. But don't let us admit what isn't. They are exceptional cases—how exceptional only the ladies know, and they'll never tell. For there is a secret conspiracy among the feminine half of society to ascribe most of the virtues to themselves, and most of the vices to men, as if Eve did not still eat apples, and know thereby a thing or two more than Adam commonly thinks she does.

The average woman is as good of her kind as the average man is of hisno better, not one whit. There are as many deliberately cruel and malicious women in society as there are deliberately neglectful and skulking men, quite as many. There .are as many wives who destroy the happiness of home as there are husbands who do so. There are as many unworthy of respect among those who wear petticoats as among those who wear braces. And there are as many men who want protection as there are women—as many! there are far more and they want it more, poor fellows. Because, you see, men are divided against themselves, even from the beginning, while women are solidly united underneath thir pretence of free criticism.' While a young man retains his freedom all women conspire to get him married, and after he is married they all conspire to help get him nicely broken into and to take contentedly to the blinkers. He cannot turn for comfort .or advice to anybody, for under no circumstances is it permissible for a self-respecting man to discuss his womenfolk, while a woman can call the whole neighbourhood into secret council upon the best way to manage her man. Possibly we are akin to the Turks by some long-forgotten tie. At any rate, we keep the door of the senana locked even against our brother, while the women of the neighbourhood go in and out unchallenged. This is time of every class, of the class that keeps the long-named society in existence as well as of the class that does not know there is a police court, and that only knows the magistracy as a capital body of after dinner story-tellers. And what shall we say of that great mass of honest people to whom the reputation of women is the very breath of family honour, and whose men over and over again silentlv suffer the tortures of Inferno, while covering and cloaking the weakness or the shame of the woman who bears their name? For every worthless weakling who abandons a deserving woman arid leaves children to their fate there is a brave and honourable man who shields a pitiful woman, and to his children is father and mother both. For neither sex is immune from drunkenness or any other vice. And neither sex possesses a monopoly of the material from which the angels are slowly building a stairway for humanity to Heaven.

Women need protection, of coursesome women. But is it not a fact that the need for protection for women has been greatly affected by the abolition of the ancient protections for men? The abolition was inevitable. The time has gone by when it was urged that one should enforce necessary family discipline with a stick "not thicker than one's thumb," and when the "duckingstool" and the " scold's bridle" were fitting official aids to the poor man whose own hand was not enough. Now a man must endure as best he can that form of torture, known, as "nagging." He must buy himself respites if lie has money. He must submit or go out to see a. friend if he cannot afford ransom. He can escape by running away if he has any weakness in that direction, and nothing much to lose. Then women who never " nag" unite with those who do in wondering at the degradation of men's natures. And it never occurs to anybody that ours is the unfortunate sex which most needs protection.

The Lyttelton Times, in giving particulars of the troopers who were hilled in the railway accident, has the following respecting Trooper Bourne — Charles Spencer Bourne was the eldest son of Mr. O. F. Bourne, of Christ's College. He was born in Auckland, and was 19 years of age last July. About 18 months before he joined the contingent he was one of the staff at the cable station at Wakapuaka. Trooper Bourno was a lieutenant in the Christ's College Rifles. He left in the H .squadron of the Otago section of the Eighth Contingent, being too late to enlist in the Canterbury section.

Mr. Michael MacDonagh has written a new book on " Parliament: Its Romance, its Comedy, its Pathos.."'