THE PARLIAMENT OF WOMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 26

THE PARLIAMENT OF WOMEN.

THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE. iFroji Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, September 29. Over 700 delegates, representing branches of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland and the affiliated societies, are met at Cambridge in annual conference. All shades of thought are represented. and eminent women there include Miss Maude Royden, Lady Trustram Eve, Mrs Ogilvie Gordon, Miss Ellis Hopkins (the founder of the movement, who was born m Cambridge), and Miss Cecile Matheson. In an address full of wisdom, Lady Frances Balfour (who presided at the opening) sketched the progress that had been made and the work that yet remained to be done. “We greet the future with a cheer,” she said, in making an appeal for further service, “and look back at the barriers surmounted and feel sure that those before us are very small objectives to be captured.” Last year the Parliament of Women had met at Sheffield, and. referring to the steel city as compared with the seat of learning. Lady Frances said they were now gathered in the workshop and forge of the mind; no steam hammer broke the repose of the ancient town, and they could give their minds to problems of education, and survey the progress of learning more notably among women. This progress had been continuous, begun long before armaments were dreamed of, and it would continue long after the world had learned, in the light of reason, to think, not in iron and steel, but in terms which made for the brotherhood of the world as taught and practised by such Christian universities. Cambridge must ever be a place of interest to women, and although preconceived ideas and prejudices had been slow to die, they looked forward with confidence to the day when Cambridge would open its gates to women, even as her sister University had done, and women would be granted the degrees they had won. Looking round, they could see many signs of enlightened progress —-women entering every profession, overcoming all obstacles, and appearing modestly first in so many lists.—(Laughter.) THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE. “Whenever I take up my paper I see the unexpected in women,” proceeded the president. “The Everest Expedition did not seem one where women would be singing ‘Excelsior!’ Reading the great achievements of that mighty ascent, without a thought other than admiration for the men who overcame, lo! I came on an account of the great deeds performed by the porters. There singled out was the prowess of a Tibetan woman who carried a tent (in which all the men lived), weighing 1601 b, and plunged with it through the long, snowy passages with the best of them.—(Laughter.) First in butter-making, first in breeding dogs, first in sheep trials, first in breeding calves and hacks, first in allotment cut tivation. Dare I mention another unexpected place where a woman’s name appeared—as a winner of the Calcutta Sweepstake?— (Laughter.) Whatever we may think of gambling, we cannot help seeing in this the spirit of adventure and enterprise.—(Laughter.) Florence Nightingale saw the absurdity of separating the sexes in public work. ‘I think it is a pity,’ she wrote, ‘that women should always look upon themselves (as men look upon them) as a great curiosity—a peculiar, strange race, like the Aztecs, or, rather, like Dr Home’s idiots, whom, after the unremitting exertions of two years, he actually taught to eat with a spoon.’—(Laughter.) That phase had not entirely passed, but it was passing. They saw it passing in the accounts of juries, of whom so many were women; of electorates, of whom so many were women ; of members of Parliament, of whom two were women. —(Cheers.) More than 60 years ago Richard Cobden, writing as the dawn was breaking for women, said: ‘My doctrine is that in proportion as physical force declines in the world and moral power acquires the ascendant, women will gain in the scale. The Quakers have acted Christianity, and their women have approached nearer to an equality with the other sex than any of the descendants of Eve. I am always labouring to put down physical force and substitute something better ; and therefore I consider myself a fellow-labourer with your daughter in the cause of women’s rights. And yet, strange to say, women are the greatest favourers of soldiering and sailoring and all that appertains to war.’ Not so unlike their comrade man, after all ! Cobden further said: ‘Christianity, in its doctrines, though not yet coming up to its own standard in its practice, did more than anything since the world began to elevate women.’ “In that (continued Lady Frances) lies the greatest hope of our future. It is the sheet-anchor of the cause of women; it is the character of our glorious liberty and freedom. And while we hold to that faith, and while we practise it, while we grip it fast, then we may humbly hope that our work may revivify life in this complex world. The freedom of women may be a new thought, but it is incorporated in our religion. Let us walk patiently in the new way, lighted by the Light of the World, and look out on the world, yet weltering in blood and darkenings at noonday. As we see the world at warfare, as we watch the slow oncoming of the thought of peace, surely we may feel we have been called in a great and solemn hour. The most conservative thing in the world is the mind cf the natural man.” —(Laughter.) THE NEAR EAST QUESTION. The crisis in the Near East was made the subject of an urgency resolution, which received the unanimous assent of the council. It read: “That this council, believing that the settlement of the Near East problem is a matter of world-wide importance, welcomes the decision of the Allied Governments that the neutrality of the Straits shall be under the guardianship of the League of Nations, and calls upon the British Government to do all that is possible to secure that the machinery of the League is utilised in tho settlement of the present dispute.” Mrs Oliver Strachey. in moving it, commented on the fact that that was the first occasion, since the admission of women to full citizenship, that they had been threatened with a war, and that women were called upon to say whether they considered that national disputes should be referred in a living manner to the League of Nations. Important as the neutrality of the Straits, or the allocation of Thrace might be, they

were doubly important by reason of the fact that they were the testing point upon which the League's machinery was to be used. Obviously it was most important that the League should prove itself an efficient machine through which all troubles would find their solution, and it was very urgent to say to the Government that they should take every opportunity to bring the League into the settlement of the present dispute, and should show their determination to make the League a reality. Mrs Edwin Gray, in seconding, said the earnest desire of all women was that the grave international crisis might be solved by conference rather than by force of arms, which could be no settlement at all. The contention of Mrs G. Cadbury was that a general policy of disarmament would he utterly useless unless the causes of war were removed. Peace, after all, was a moral conception, and so long as nations remained unreformed morally, so long would there be war and human suffering.