WOMEN, WAR AND BABIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11504, 28 September 1915, Page 3

WOMEN, WAR AND BABIES.

(By JANE ADDA MS, President Woman's International Peaee Party, in " Harper's Weekly.") Many worn on throughout t-ho world havo sot tihoir faces unalterably against war. This is our reason for our organisation against war. I heard a movement planned to unite womanhood, in all parte of tiro world, in a. great protest against. Europe's war. ll'. is called the Women's 1 'eaco Party andis international in ftoone. It bewail its existence at Washington, and is increasing in membership with rapidity.

A<i women we arc the custodians of the life of the ages and wo will not longer consent to its reckless destrue-t-ioii. Wo are particularly charged with the future of childhood, the care of the helpless ivnd the unfortunate, and wo will nob longer endure without protest that added burden of maimed' and invalid men and poverty-stricken women and orphans which war places on us. We havo budded by the patient drudgery of the past the basic foundations of the home and of peaceful industry; we will not longer endure that hoary ovi! which in an hour destroys or tolerate that denial of the sovereignty of reason and just-ice by which war and all that makes for war to-day render impotent THE IDEALISM OF THE RACE. Therefore we demand that our right to be consulted in tho settlement of questions concerning not alone the lifo of individuals, but of nations, be recognised and respected, that women bo given a share in deciding between war and peace. Soma or the objects we are working on to obtain are limitation of armaments and the nationalisation of their manufacture; organised opposition to militarism in our own country and education of yontlis in tho ideals of pence; democratic control of foreign policies; the further humanising of Governments by the extension of the franchise to vs'omon : I£ concert of nations " to supersede "balance of poweraction towards the gradual organisation of the world to substitute law for war. We also believe in The substitution of an international policy for rival armies -and ' navies; removal of the economic causes of war; tho appointment by our Government of a commission of men and women, with an adequate appropriation, to PROMOTE INTERNATIONAL PEACE. At the present moment women in Europe arc- being told: "Bring children into the world for the benefit of the nation; for the strengthening of future battle lines; forget everything that vou have been taught to hold dear; forget your long struggle to establish the responsibilities of fatherhood; forget all but the appetite of _ war for human flesh, .ft must bo satisfied and you must bo the ones to feed it, cost what it may. This war is destroying the home unit in tho most highly civilised countries of tho world to an" extent which iB not less than appalling. Could there be a more definite and dreadful illustration of the tendenoies of war to break down and destroy the family unit? All such consequences of war mitigate against tho age-long efforts of woman to establish tho paternity of lier child and the father's responsibility for it. In the interest of _ this effort the State has made marriage a matter of license and record, and the Church has SURROUNDED IT BY EVERY POSSIBLE SANCTITY. Under the pressure of war, however, both of these institutions have in a large measure withdrawn their protection. All that women have held dear, all that the Church has worked for and the Stato lias ordered, has beeu swept away in a breath—the hot breath of war —leaving woman in her primitive, pitiable stale of the necessity of selfdefence, without the strength with which to compass self-defence. So long as a State, through the exigencies of war, is obliged to place military authority above_ all civil rights, women can havo within it no worthy place, no opportunity for their development, and they cannot hope for authority in its councils. Thousands of thera in Europe, as in the United_ States had become so thoroughly imbued with the idea that the recognition of the sacredness of human life had at last become established throughout, the world, that the news of this war to them CAME AS AN INCREDIBLE SHOCK. Women arc entitled in all justice to some consideration in this Flatter of war-making, if only because they have necessarily been paramount in tho nurture of that human life which is now being so lavishly spent. TJie advanced nations know v<ry accurately, and we have begun to know m America, how many chrldren are needlessly lest in the first years of infancy. Measures inaugurated for the prevention of infant mortality were slowly spreading from one country to another. All that effort has b°en scattered to tho winds by the war. No one is now pretending to count 'he babies tvho are dying throughout the villages and countrysides of tho warring nations.