WOMEN IN THE COMMONS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3804, 4 September 1936, Page 10

WOMEN IN THE COMMONS

There have been some splendid women in the House of Commons, able and sincere, and very hard-working; but not one of them has ever had a decisive or even an important influence in the shaping of policy or the fate of Government. No woman has yet, for instance, swayed a party conference or turned votes in a critical debate in the House of Commons. No woman has yet raised a great moral issue whidh has transcended party controversy, and confounded old beliefs as, for instance, did Mr Rosslyn Mitchell, when with one speech, he secured the defeat of the New Prayer Book; or Mr Baldwyn, when, with his moving appeal for “Peace in our time, 0 Lord,” he secured the withdrawal of a Bill to penalise the Trade Unions.

It will be argued that very few men have had triumphs of that kind and that, in any case, women in comparison with men have only been in public life for a very short time. That is true; but it is nevertheless strange that in that time, they have not produced one woman with statesmanship or even’ outstanding personality. In the years before women achieved the vote the name of Mrs Pankhurst was a household word. It was not merely that she was conducting the most brilliant agitation of our time; but she was the embodiment of causes and ideals for which women were ready to endure every privation. What woman to-day is known outside the relatively narrow class of those actively interested in everyday politics?—Robert Berneys, M.P., in “Pearson’s.”

No longer ’’under the Limes“ 5 Visitors who teve know’n Berlin in other days will have a shock when they see Uniter den Liden, writes “Peterborough” in the London Daily Telegraph. That famous thoroughfare, which is the Champs Elysees of Berlin, no longer justifies its name. Its old limes have all been cut down. Various reasons are given for the felling. A certain number had to be cut down for the construction of the new underground—built on the cut-and-eover system. Apparently it was felt that the trees must all be of one size. Hence the general cleanup.