NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21297, 26 September 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

a UNIVERSITY WOMEN ry At tho international conference of the ie Federation of University Women at EdinQ _ burgh, a discussion took place on the question, "Is University Education Ade--3e quate Preparation for Women for Conj_ temporary Life ?" The conference broke s up into about 30 small groups, each of c which discussed tho question separately. 0 _ In a group composed of school teachers [o from many countries, one speaker said ;o that the modern schoolgirl was refusing to t- go to the university because she thought 1- it was not adequate preparation fdr real jr life. She would like to marry, and she ie felt that once a woman was labelled "inin tellectual" she would not have the same C- chance to do so. The opinion of the group e- was that although tho schoolgirls' view it might or might not be justified, it was > likely to become more prevalent unless ie steps were taken to correct it. Dr. Agnes J- Rogers, an American delegate, described ie an investigation conducted in the United States to find out the position of the woman graduate of over 40 years old. She said that in the present economic crisis !S women were being discarded ruthlessly by employers, but it was found that a J ' university woman had a better chance of 1_ keeping her job than a woman who had 6 not been to a university. A university woman in the United States could earn a salary running into thousands of pounds annually. Speaking in another group, Mrs. Lucinda Prince, the head of an American college, said that 40 years ago only a small percentage of university women " married. Now three-quarters of them did so. The opinion in another group was that university education gave the mental discipline necessary to enable a girl to find her way through life. It was also suggested that some technical training was advisable. Dr. M. A. Loschi, an Italian delegate, said that she thought university t women were more adaptable than uni- > versity men. Women wero able to take k work that it would worry a man to do if he had a degree, t 1 CRIMES OF VIOLENCE > 5 In a letter to the Times upon the ques--1 tion of punishment for crimes of violence, - the frequency of which in Britain is causi ing concern, Mr. Alfred E. Pease, who ■ has had 52 years' judicial experience at ■ Home and in the colonies, including the governorship of a large convict gaol, says: r —lt is a great reproach to our civilisa- ' tion that there is this alarming increase ] of highway robberies, 'smash-and-grab' raids, and of 'hold-ups' in banks and post ' offices. Our police were never more effi- ' cient or better equipped, yet there is an appalling increase in the number of indictable offences known to the police. I ascribe 1 this increase to the inadequate sentences passed by Judges and to the inadequate punishments provided in our prisons under our penal system. ... I am not an advocate so much of long terms of penal servitude as of adequate punishment. I know that a short sentence, where the punishment is such that the .prisoner leaves a prison determined never to enter one again, is the most merciful. A severe flogging is from the humanitarian point of view far more merciful' to the culprit and less 'hardening' to a prison staff than long years of imprisonment. No ordinary human being can witness physical suffering without pity and feeling that a crime has been expiated. I have had to witness many flogging sentences carried out, and, contrary to the opinion sometimes held that flogging brutalises the convict and the man who has to flog him, I assert it does neither. What does harden warders is to have to do, year after year, with uncured and hardened or hopeless criminals. Forty years ago the severest sentenoe as regards actual punishment was 'two years' hard labour.' A strong labourer could get through with it, but it was a cruel sentence on a man of sedentary occupation. What is a sentence of hard labour now ? Its deterrent effect is reduced to a minimum." SOVIET EXPERIENCE The Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the Soviet Union has published the results of an investigation of labour conditions in the Urals, says the Riga correspondent of the Times. The investigation , was undertaken in order to discover why ( the "labour flux," which was unkown in -| tho Ural industry until about two years ( ago, has now become the greatest dis- , organising factor there. Tho report states j that a "human torrent" is now sweeping j from the Urals and newly recruited work- ( ers are insufficient to make good the losses j due to the great exodus of old hands, j Formerly, the Ural workers were tho most stable cadres of Russia. They had ' become attached to their particular localities in the course of two or three generations, and even the great revolutionary upheaval affected them little. Under tho old capitalist system each household had permanently acquired its own house or . hut with a plot of land, and most of 1 them had a cow, some pigs, poultry, and 1 other small cattle. They were naturally unwilling to leave these possessions, and 2 the industries thus had permanent professional workers tin the spot. But the new j spirit which developed under the Five (j years Plan took no account of the advantages derived by Soviet industry from this t permanent element. Over-zealous Communist agitators influenced local authori- r| ties against the small-holders, who were, consequently, persecuted for their posses- , sions, branded as semi-kulaks, and taxed j beyond all measure, until they and their families found it preferable to abandon , their homes and seek employment elsewhere. Now there is hardly any remnant left of this permanent clement, and the w Ural industries have almost entirely lost e what they called their "own" experienced s | workers, having become a sort of corridor for the "human torrent" which rushes Cl through in search of better conditions » rumoured to exist in other places which is are always said to be a little farther on. a Some of the biggest works in the Urals s; can thus register more than 100 per cent w turnover in their Workmen in the course b of a few months* r<