HOW WOMEN HELP

Opunake Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3164, 24 January 1928, Page 2

HOW WOMEN HELP

CREATIVE FORCE, Courage in biography is so rare that we ought to thank Mr. Herbert Sullivan and Mr. Newman Flower for revealing the fact that Mrs. Donalds was “the greatest influence” in Sir Arthur Sullivan’s life. Mr. Sullivan as a loyal nephew, might have been coerced and cowed by the pitiless cynicism of uncharitable hyprocrites who see nothing but evil in every mixed friendship. He treats the whole tribe with disdain. He allows the world to realise how much he owes to this wonderful woman who was at all times his uncle’s mentor. “It was a friendship of fidelity which lasted till death, and during many years was never broken for a single hour.” Sir Arthur Sullivan consulted her in most things, almost in everything. When abroad he wrote to her daily, and if no letter or telegram was forthcoming his day was spoiled. And yet we are told, her influence on him has “often been discussed and usually misunderstood.” Why on earth should it be misunderstood? Charity thinketh no evil, writes Janies Doulas in the London “Sunday Express.” But there are many self-righteous persons who think evil about every faithful friendship between a man and a woman. Their minds .are poisoned by lack of faith in the power of love, in the goodness of love, and in the nobility of love.

They are morbidly eager to peer ana pry into the highest and holiest mysteries of affection in the hope of discovering something base* I have no doubt that in Palestine the backbiters were capable of innuendoes about Mary and Martha. Our hypocrisy besmirches and tarnishes the soul of womanhood. Our faithlessness robs it of its due reverence and honour. Me bow before a Dante, but we deny a Beatrice our obeisance and our homage. It is meet for us to cultivate the spirit of humility in cur judgments. It is fitting that we should give our fellowcreatures not the insolent benefit or our basest doubt, but the grateful benefit of our best belief. Behind every great man there is a great woman whose soul is the creative force in his genius. History is cruelly unjust to woman. It does not crown, her devotion or canonise her service. It prefers to hail the hero while it stones the heroine. It enjoys the gifts of male genius without acknowledging the share of womanhood in their creation. Man is honoured, woman is despised.

It is outrageously absurd to imagine than an unmarried friendship is incredible. It is nevertheless the basic doctrine of censorious bigots that every mixed friendship dutside marriage is necessarily and inevitably evil, corrupt, wicked and degraded. In my own experience of life I have known many of these mixed friendships which were pure, holy, and beyond reproach. The whole point is whether there is a good influence at work or a bad one. Marriage does not convert bad into good. IN or does the absence of the marriage tie convert good into bad. There is often goodness outside it. It takes courage to say this and to believe it. I take off my hat to Messrs. Sullivan and Flower.