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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 135, 14 July 1914, Page 6

A correspondent, whose effort appears in another part of the paper, takes The Sun to task for its criticisms of Lady Stout's principles, and indicts us on-a charge of grave discourtesy to "a distinguished visitor to this city." Perhaps we "may be allowed in rebuttal to suggest that Lady Stout came to Christchurch in a public capacity, as a lecturer with a message for those people who are interested in her peculiar propaganda. As such, she was as open to criticism as a Socialist agitator or the walking delegate of the Carnegie. Peace institute. Our correspondent has? his own ideas as to the ethics of newspaper comment, and has yet to learn the difference between "grave discourtesy to a distinguished visitor and a reasonably candid criticism, not of the visitor herself, but of her doctrines. He claims for the lady he champions an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of the woman's suffrage movement, and is severe..on the "writer's appalling ignorance" of that question in Great Britain. If he had read the obnoxious coniment comprehendingly, he would have seen what was clear to any unprejudiced reader that the objection to Lady Stotit's pVeftchiiients was concerned with her fantastic and advanced theory that /'woman's position in the Dominion |was not what it ought to be." We | hold to the old-fashioned belief that I the women of the Dominion are modI elled on lines that approximate to the (world's motherly mothers, and that that type is the best, the truest, and the most acceptable to man at large. The ; chains Lady, Stout urges them t-o discard exist only in her own mind* and in the minds of that small section, I the members of which are so advanced that they have outstripped both fact and commonsense. New Zealand's women are contented enough, and have no cause to be otherwise. Lady Stout enters, and, practically unasked, would find grievances for them where none existed; hence our protest. She is sowing seed on stony ground. All this talk of the rights of women and the equality of the sexes lias become a weariness to the flesh. Women in the colonies—that is to say, the unmeddlesome homely women—have all the rights they wish. Those who plant bombs, or justify that destructive horticulture, can hardly hope to be accepted seriously as leaders of any sort of social reform movement.