WOMAN'S WORLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15685, 12 August 1914, Page 10

WOMAN'S WORLD.

WOMEN OF GEEMANY.

STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE.

The war news of the past week has focused the attention of the whole world upon the Continent of Europe, and matters that have held but little interest for us, have suddenly come to claim a larger amount of attention than ever they received before. One way and another, we have beard a good deal about, the mon if Germany, and are undoubtedly destined to hear a good deal more in tho near future, but of the women, their status, their hopes and aspirations, we have not heard nearly so much.

" Perhaps in no other country in tho world," says Mrs. Philip Snowden, a champion of the women's movement, " has the struggle of women for some measure of independence and equality with men been so severe as in Germany. .Militarism is ever and always the enemy of the progress of mankind, and particularly of the female half of mankind." Tho Right to Vote. Throughout the greater part of the Fatherland, women are still excluded from the sphere of citizenship. Vet here and there women have certain incipient rights. In Prussia, for instance, land-owning women have a vote in tho communal elections, but it may only be exercised through nialo representatives. Only in Hanover are landowning women permitted to vote in person. As an instance of the dilliculty in obtaining the co-operation of their menfolk, it ib stated that the campaign against ihe legalisation of vice has had to be conducted entirely by women, unsupported by physicians, lawyers, and members of Parliament, as in Great Britain. Low Status of Women. Similarly with the straggle for education, tho way has been long and bitter. Only within recent years have tho German Universities been thrown open to women. Only recently, too, the law permitted them to associate for political purposes. Industrial training for women has been partly won only with tremendous effort, and yet only half of Germany's adult women are married.

The German women are organised in women's clubs, and make their demands known through these organ Nations, but. there is a growing feeling of the need 07 political power. Although in some of the German States there is a municipal suffrage for women, under which they vote by proxy, the general status of women in the Fatherland is low, when compared with that of British women.

The German Emperor appears to express the national ideal for women, that they are made for children, kitchen, and Church!

A BANNED NOVEL.

"CUTTING" A COUNTESS.

The Austrian Army is extremely autocratic in its methods, as a well-known Austrian countess recently had good cause to realise. How even high society dames rray have their visiting lists primed for them by the army authorities is shown by a little incident which came to light a short time ago. Countess Edith Saalburg, an Austrian novelist who moves in the highest circles, published a sensational romance, entitled When Kings Love." The 6tory contained many allusions to various incidents of which the Imperial Court has been the theatre in the recent past. This was clearly a case of coming too near homo to please those in authority, who quite evidently did not relish the idea of the book obtaining wide circulation. The first consequence of the writer's rashness was the confiscation of the book by the police. Tlwn General Dankl, commanding the Tyrolese Army Corps, stepped in, and forbade all the officers under him to set foot inside the Countess's villa at Arco. The lady, thus finding her visiting list formidably reduced, made bitter complaint, and a number of deputies of her acquaintance have been endeavouring to get the War Minister to raise the interdict. In the present critical state of affairs, however, it seems highly probable that the countess's visiting list will remain pruned indefinitely!

FLYING WOMEN.

EARLY DAYS OF BALLOONING.

English papers recently to hand contain accounts of the latest * novelty— aviation picnics. One would rather fancy the idea to bo just a little too novel for the ordinary woman, although the number of women interested in aviation has increased wonderfully within the last year or two. Every age has its brave women, and just as every day now brings fresh acoession to tho ranks of flying women, so in the early days of ballooning there was no lack of courageous ladies. The first actual ascent by a woman took place in Paris from a captive balloon, in 1784, only one year after the Montgolfier brothers had made practical experiments with globes filled with hot air. A month later tho first unattached aerial voyage was made by Madame Tliible with M. Fleurand, at Lyons, and in 1785 there appears a short but vivid account of an ascent which ended disastrously. "Mr and Mrs. Guire, in the same month (May) having ascended from Dublin, were taken up out of the Channel in a boat." Further details are lacking, but it needs small imagination to supply them. But the most famous of these early ballooning ladies was Mrs. Graham, an intrepid woman who mado many ascents alone, and experienced many adventures. By 1857 it was a common thing for women to go ballooning. Mother bhipton, if you remember, predicted long ago that men " would in the air bo swm," but Mother Shipton was evidently no feminist, or her prophetic vision would have enabled her to sc« her own se>; side by side with man up among tho clouds just as she is on terraiirma! i

OPPORTUNITY.

THE PASSING MOMENT.

Many of our sagos and poets have written on the wisdom of seizing every passing opportunity. It was Dr. John son who said "Ho that waits for an opportunity to do much at once may breathe out his life in idlo wishes, and regret -in his last hour his useless intentions and barren zeal." Countless opportunities for rendering service, countless acts that have possibilities of good, come to each one of us; the trouble is, wo fail to recognise them. For ono thing, you never know what child in rags and pitiful squalor (hat meets you in the street may have in him the germs of pits that might add new treasures to the storehouse of beautiful things or noble arts. In that great storm of terror that swept over Franco in 1793, a certain man who was every hour expecting to he led off to the guillotine uttered this memorable sentiment: "Even at this incomprehensible moment," he said, " when morality, enlightment, love of country of them only make death at the prison-door or on the scaffold more oertain— on the fatal tumbrel itself, with nothing free but my voice, I would still cry 'Take care!' to a child that should como too near the wheel: perhaps I may save his life, perhaps he may one day save his country. ' This is a generous and inspiring thought—ono to which tho roughest-handed man or woman may respond as honestly and heartily as the philosopher who wrote it. It "ought to shame tho listlossness with which Romany see the great phantasmagoria of life passing by without asking of themselves— what part do I play in all this; have 1 obligations to tho rest of my followmen, or am I merely a spectator ? Each moment brings opportunity; it rests with ourselves whether we grasp it or let it pass unheeded.

HUMDRUM LIVES.

In these piping days of "50n,.,),; ' doing"_aU the time we are som fi n P astray by restless people who mS 0 that our lives are humdrum- that L never lived; that wo don't Slv 6>' tho meaning of Life. Our simp ? ve k " ow declared motive; fruitless" , 10 t !?"? the living. True, we are not ~v , .„ „• ' Hh the mental spasms of this heroin' 5 wonderful soulful experience?'of',? lo heroine; wo show a prosaic self. c '~''"" » love-affair,; we' haven't S"> home or two ,„ order to build new 0 „J, * the nuns; we seem to cxn ; ' nes ■'" mind-splitting decisions in the „!,'! our lives or homes. In short like ttt° in George Ade's Fable. we iw' V"' 1 soul crises in our families n H IWe j?M that "nothing happed to „;?•!? lives must, I* "terribly dull" ,„i CUt forth. Yet do we m .t )ive? To] ' ," of us come the great loves the few whelming sorrows, the ,„ul Ending £' tations": As a matter of fart K?' necessary to life'' When all is' F -a< , done, is it not Hip doilv ~,v , the I*"*' tat await, us all the U™ J the business , ares, the potty decisions £ Rood or ev,l, that really me,,, life 7n r , not the exatoment of melodrama nor £ nervous Imitation* and upheaval ! spasmodic |,ves/ Does excitement lnea ' living: '■■ ~i. sfleriion. enthnsiim teres) and work' Are these not the V , foundat.ons of living If „>, we ,]] o ? ran live as thousands of us are , jv * finding n reasonable amount of hanniS' and contentment in so doing. 8 THE DAILY TASK. The following beautiful lines of Stevon son 8 are well known.-- The dav lel ."" and brings us the petty round of Irritating concerns and duties. Help us to pla £ man, help us to perform them witli'l-Lf tar and kind fares; let cheerful abound with industry. (Jive us l 0 ," blithely on our business all this day brine' us to our resting-beds weary and'eontem and undishonoured. and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. Amen. _ "To be honest, to he kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for hit presence. To renounce when that shall be necessary, and not he embittered* to : keep a few friends, but these without capitulation. Above all, on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself Here is a task for all that a man has. of fortitude and delicacy." WAR. A contributor sends the following timely verses:— Oh! thorny in the pillow. All restless is the head. There's blare of busies, throb of drumThe scream of vultures War is come. Yea! Blessed are the dead.

Oh! stormy is the pillow, Well-nigh overcharged the heart: For winds arc shrieking—Woe l Woo' Wot! Man's pride lias been his overthrow, And tears the world apart.

Oh! thorny is the pillow. Lot*, wide-eyed in the dark. Is dumbly Quivering (or her own, Afar, anear, known or unknown. Deluged, without an ark.

Oh! thorny is the pillow, The air is full of fear; Wo are but children of a day, Sparc us this orgy, 'this dism&j, God of the Ages, hear. Oh! thorny is the pillow, Bid slimit and tumult cease. Lord Christ from whom the demons fl«, Who hushed the rage of Galilee, Say to this man-sea, Peace. Oh! thorny is the pillow. Fling down _ one heavenly palmLone waving o'er the crystal sea, Lot leaves fall from the healing treeThen shall be—a great calm. Auckland. August 2, 1911.