“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3495, 8 March 1921, Page 49

“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Ppeciallv Written lor the Ladies’ Paged ENTER 1921. Among the seasonable cartoons was one representing 1920 as a ragged, down-at-heels, evil-visaged tramp, standing behind the chair of the employer, who, seated at his desk, without a farewell glance at the departing vagabond, is handing over his shoulder a “recommendation,” which reads, “I have known 1920 all his life, and am delighted to get rid of him!” Another cartoon represents the newly-born year sitting up in its cradle, and looking half-frightened and half-beseechingly and on the verge of tears at the hideous group about its bed, saying, “What a strange family I’ve been born into!” There is D.0.R.A., the nurse, w r ith horrible smirk and claw-like hands stretched out to grab the child, and Unemployment, menacing and distorted with evil passions, bending down over it, with Government Waste and Bolshevism lurking in the shadows. No wonder the New Year is inclined to cry. The air is tense with trouble. It is a terrifying outlook; but with new life is bom new courage, and the mystified child is looking its ugly companions straight in the face, although complaining. We are reminded that when our soldiers had a tough job ahead of them or the road was storm-lashed or dust-choked and victory seemed impossible, they sang their loudest “Are we downhearted? No!” Everyone wrought and fought for victory ; though defeat seemed more than probable our British spirit would not let us dwell upon the probability of failure—and we won because of that. And we shall win this war against the enemies of our own nation if we pull together with the same spirit of unity—Labour and Capital, employer and emploved—that bound the nation during the war. But by spending our strength in tearing and rending one another, instead of in “keeping the city.” we shall play into the hands of the enemy who is already again plotting evil against us. and whose dearest wish is for a British house divided against itself, a British Empire at loggerheads. But England is not ‘‘down and out.” as her evilwishers fondly hope. She is “down” commerciallv for the moment, but she is not out of the struggle for supremacy. The land “fit for heroes to live in” is covered with the debris of war: it will be the future that will gather the roses and fruit. This generation will not he paid Tiack for its magnificent heroism -the pavment will he carried forward ; but it will be paid with compound interest in the Empire-to-be. Britons yet unborn will reap the harvest we have sown. Tn honour and pride the rising generation will gather the grapes where we uprooted

thorn*, Mid In their turn will plant again for them that will come after them.. The nine months’ decrease in the official returns of the excess profits duties is £46.000,000, and tells its own tale of diminished trade as compared with the previous corresponding nine months. Other decreases were Customs £10.144,000 and land values duties £332,000, Dut the heavy property and income tax yielded an extra £19,678,000 from the victims, the increased postal service £58,834,000, and the telephone service £1,350,000. In the past three months there has been a decrease of £25,985,000 in the excess profits duties compared with the last three months of 1919 j but the vear shows a net increase of £192,552,024 on the previous year. A reform that will make for the health of the nation is the Women’s, Young Person’s, and Children’s Act (Employment), providing that no child under 14 shall be employed in specified labour, and also regulating the employment of women and young children. The position of women in England never had a brighter outlook. The centuries-old prejudice against their emancipation died hard, as all ancient prejudices die; even yet it lingers with a remnant of the intellectuals, who will never be convinced that women are eligible to share the seats of the mighty on her own merits; and the other class who never want it proved that anything is so. good for woman as servility. But having proved otherwise during the war, and winning the vote In recompense, the parliamentary franchise is opening the long-closed doors. In 1919 the Sex Disqualification Removal Bill became an Act of Parliament, and came into operation on January 1. 1920. It opened both branches of the legal profession to them. No women have been called to the Bar as yet, or admitted as solicitors, but after a few more terms many will pass into the legal profession. The judges of the present generation do not expect to share the bench with women colleagues, but they see the probability for the younger men. The year 1920 saw a great increase of women serving on borough councils, and as women magistrates and on local bodies, elected by the people. And thev have now been empannelled on iuries. With the opening of the Old Bailey sessions women will sit on the jury in London’s ancient scene of criminal justice • but the Old Bailey of tile present dav hears little resemblance to that terrible place of Dickens’s day. where notorious evil-doers met their fate. It is not now necessary, as in an earlier day. to strew herbs between the bench and the prisoner at the Bar as a barrage against the deadlv “jail fever.” The Old Bai’ey of to-day is spic and span. Recent statistics indicate that during 1920 crime increased, and that during 1921 there will he serious activities of criminals of the educated classes. Welldressed, well-mannered men and women are the most dangerous of thieves, because the least suspected. We had long become accustomed to the Bill Svkes tvpe of burglar, offspring of the extinct Tom AllAlone type of slum. I sometimes wonder how far the clever detective story is responsible for -creating the idea of the intellectual thief: certainly these stories popularise the character. The subtie analysis of circumstance and emotion leads the reader from the fact that a thief is a thief whether of refined manners, just as a murderer is a murderer whether he administers poison courteously in a cut-glass or hashes his victim with a hatchet. There are many women burglars now as independently “on their own” as in other professions. As jewel thieves, etc., they are more resourceful than men. Some manage to get invitations to houses as guests, the present-day “free and easv ’ laxities of the new gentry' making this possible. Others, “honestly” equipped with the burglar’s outfit, break into houses in the orthodox stvle. while women pickpockets and shop-thieves are the most ex pert.

There was for some time after the war an inclination among a number of magistrates to be too lenient with criminals. Unbalanced nerves and war shock were the chief excuses, but after it had occurred that a number of these "irresponsible” persons who went unpunished were speedily convicted of worse offences, the magistrates hardened their hearts, and the burglar no longer pleads “shell shock.” The report of the Eambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, held in 1920, says: “The Church must franklv acknowledge that it has undervalued and neglected the gifts of women, and has ton thanklessly used their work.” And in that generous acknowledgment, which adds that the Church would he greatly strengthened and enriched by the organised use of women’s gifts, much has been done to heal that sense of soreness and failure from which too many women have suffered by reason of their best being taken as a matter of course. The foundations of the Church may have been built upon a man, but its torch-bearers have been women. In the Church, a-s in the home, women have been allocated its most obscure and monotonous tasks, too often unacknowledged and unthanked as the real upholders of its traditions. Tt is realised that with the recognition of the State a woman’s status has changed, and without the official recognition of the Church much of woman’s svm nathy and labour will be lost to it-—an irreparable loss. So the subject received great attention at the Conference, and the part which women should take in the ministry of the Church, and. on the whole, the conference encouraged the Order of Deaconesses, although many clergy and lawmen were startled at the suggestion, thinking that when women are admitted to the humblest form of holy orders there will he further innovations. It is probable that, the Guardianship of Infants Bill will shortly become law. it has passed through the Commons, and awaits the decision of the Lords. This Bill concerns women very closely, granting her hv law what God and Nature decreed from the beginning—that is, the joint

guardianship of the child, and making those tragedies no longer possible where mother and child are thin apart by the father. As the law now stands the mother is only legal guardian under those circumstances where, more than any other, the man should be made responsible. The subjects of bastardy, the adoption of chil- , dr on, and divorce are receiving increased j attention, and however often they may be j shelved will not be abandoned until re forms are adopted. It would be amusing if it' were not a path iic exhibition of anxiety to get something cheap to witness, the crowds that i have flocked to the New Year’s sales. On * the Monday morning, before it was yet light, to early as 6 o’clock, women were waiting in the streets for the opening of the doors at 9, and long before that hour was reached there was a dense crowd of expectant bargain-purchasers patiently waiting in the rain for admission ; not at one store only, but at all those of long established names. These sales have been colossal, the goods going at half and even a third of the pre-Christmas prices. Boots, shoes, underwear, coats, furs of the cheaper kinds (the high-class skins were not included), suits, suitings for men as well as women, and a notable feature of the crowds was that men were almost as ; numerous as women. The managers give various reasons for soiling-—huge stocks left over, the cancellation of large orders from overseas were among these reasons; but one suspects that the chiefest was to turn into ready * cash what the slow buying of the past season and the changing fashions of next would otherwise have meant a dead loss. For instance, “jumpers” are going out, 1 that is why hundreds of women could purchase' smart woollen jumpers at 12s 6d that cost £4 4s and £5 5s this time last | year. It is an ill wind that blows nobody ; any good. But beyond these sales—and advertisers press upon the public notice that prices a't the low level will not he permanent—\here is little indication of a general drop

in prices. Bread is down a loaf, and we are told that the twopenny cakes m restaurants and tea-shops are to be lid. But we need something more substantial than this, and But we are wishing each other a happy New Year.