WOMEN’S PART IN WAR-TIME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24483, 17 December 1940, Page 10

WOMEN’S PART IN WAR-TIME

“There are two types of women who are a problem •in wartime; the woman who wails, ‘lf someone will tell me what to do. I’ll do it,' and the worse nuisance who says, I won t do anything until I have to.’ ” It was Ellen Wilkinson, M.P.. commonly known both inside and outside the House of Commons as "the irrepressible redhead,” who made this statement recently in a broadcast over the 8.8. C network. And she went on to say: . "History shows that the firmness of a people’s resistance depends on the women. At such a crisis it is no use we women thinking somehow we can keep our comforts. If we are worrying about what is going to happen to the ornaments on the mantelpiece, our nation will fail. If we are ready to throw our most cherished objects at the head of the enemy, the point ot successful resistance is reached, me tide will surely turn. “ This democracy we are fighting 101 leaves a great deal of initiative to the individual Suppose you go into a committee of one. You, the lonely woman there seems no place for: or the mother with a house to look after, or the older woman with not much strength left. Have you really tried to get into the war effort or were you discouraged at the first refusal? Red-haired, dynamic Ellen Wilkinson. Labour member for Jarrow since 1924, is now Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security. She is unmarried, and lives in a small flat in Guildford street, near the British Museum Books are her home companions She would like, if she could only find time, to write a novel “to get the working-class over.” Her second great desire is to become a really good chess player. She dreams of a world where there are not extreme contrasts. She rejects dictatorships, whether Fascist or Communist, as anti-progressive. And she calls upon workers, blackcoated or overalled, to fight them.—Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement.