NEW SUFFRAGETTE THEORY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8683, 17 March 1914, Page 4

NEW SUFFRAGETTE THEORY

The doings of the redoubtable suffragettes are arousing fresh interest in the unique destruction campaign that is being waged in Great Britain.' The question naturally arises as to how future generations will view the suffrage riots that have absolutely no parallel in history. In this connection, a most entertaining theory has been put forward by a writer in one of the German reviews. All these ebullitions of violence, ho maintains, iare only another form of woman’s pseudo-defiance of man that has been used from time immemorial to attract the opposite sex. It is well known that there is a superfluity of the female sex in Great Britain—that is to say, tho number of women greatly out-numbora the number of men. A seeming defiance is very often one of tho female’s best weapons to gain tho attention of the male, not only in the animal kingdom, hut amongst humanity. Although the suffragettes may not know it, urges the German professor, their destructive operations are nothing more than nature’s impulse driving the marriageless women on in .a desperate attempt to attract the attention of man, allegedly superior, according to -Mrs Pankhuret, bv mere brute force. Women do not really want the privilege of the vote, lie says. Ail they want is tho present exercisers of that privilege. Thus the scientist neatly disposes of what is assuming the proportions of a gigantic problem at home. The theory is very plausible, but cannot cany much comfort to Mr McKenna, tho harassed Home Secretary.