THE WOMAN INFLUENCE IN GERMANY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11781, 19 August 1916, Page 8

THE WOMAN INFLUENCE IN GERMANY.

It is, of coursr-, difficult to judge of ;i people by the cursory view that travellers obtain. But I remember on my first visit tfo Germany how astonished I was at the casual way women were treated, and tho enormous amount of physical work they performed. Tho peasants laboured in tho Holds even as tho men; earripd, heavy burdens; performed all sorts of duties; worked as domestic servants in private families, or hotels, or lodging-houses as 1 had never seen servants work either in England, or Franco, or tho colonies. In "the higher circles of society I discovered that tho "lady" held still only a position equivalent to hor capacity as «' Hausfrau." From a rolafive of mino who had married a. Gorman and lived in Gottingcu I learnt that this position was tho solo honour a German husband offered as equivalent for the sacrifice of hiuisdi in marriatre. That ho only looked upon his wi'ro as someone who would minister t O , and take charge of bis personal comforts; see to his food, his clothe.,, his rest, his physical requirements, and bo satisfied herself with such casual courtesy or endearments as a bultan may choose to bestow on a slave. In military circles tho husbaud was even a most absolute despot, but so used wore the women to look upon him as a superior being that they rejoiced itl his tyranny and gloried in their own subservience. Mothers of past generations had taught this duty to their daughters, awd it had been re-taught, and carried on through successive generations, until the very thought ot liberty such as English women and French women and American women enjoy, seemed absolutely immoral. Now, humiliating as the thought may bo to tho gloriously-uniiormed, heel-clicking militant, yet tho fact remains that ho was once a mero flabby, squalling infant. A thing of no significance except to his mother or his nurse. He was dependent on a woman for everything. Had she neglected, or starved, or ill-used him as in later years ho has ill-used her, ho would not have heen able to toko his placo in the Bold of self-glorification; ho_ might have known only a diseased or crippled manDoes he over think of thisP Is he ever grateful or loyal to women as a sex hecauso of tho debt ho owes to one woman as a martyr? It seems not. The whole teaching of German philosophy and of Gorman scientists has tended to the degradation rather than the advaucement of woman. Her place is always that of tho inferior, tho subordinate. He is always master of tho house. His word is law; his tastes alone are to be consulted. She is the satellite to his sun, but ho must always be tho sun. If ,he shines, let her bo duly grateful; if he sulks behind clouQs of discontent, let hor patiently wait his re-effulgence. Tho relative of whom I spoke had become a patient down-trodden, domes, tic creature, tyrannised over by her husband and his relatives, unablo to do anything that was right laccordins to German views or prejudices, and bitterly regretful of lost liberty,, oven of the mid-Viotoriau order of feminine enfranchisement. HUMILITY EXPLAINED. It wns then that I began to question tho reasons for this humility, and came at last to tho conclusion that ft was the women of Germany who had spoilt their men, spoilt them by the perpetual submission of mothers and sistors, usually continued by sweethearts and wives. Always and ever did tho "adoring feminine" march side by side with tho tyrannous male. "Ho who must be obeyed" as son, as husband, as father, soon became incapable of any other attitude than that of commando. When he left his own country and went to those where women hold a position of their own and challenged man's prerogatives in almost overy profession, or every art, he could not understand why it was permitted. When, little by little, tho sea' of advanced thought swept to bis own shores and threatened to engulf a contingent of his own down-crushed womanhood, ha was in absolute terror. The ideal ot the " Hausfrau" could not exist if the said "Hausfrau" was to learn of her slavery. By every means must her eyes be kept closed and her intellect submerged in domesticity. Her place was in the homo. Sho must at least superintend what she did not) aotually perform. Even rank had domestio obligations respecting tho washing of the hest chiua. the making of a special " Kuchen," the personal homo Buperintendcnce of tho " Fran Hochgebornen," or tho "Frau Militarisch." The German mind seems always to work in grooves. For so long had women been insignificant by comparison, that ho could not contemplate a threatened rovolt. The Ail-Highest himself had over and over again declared the ideal Woman as " wife, mother and cook." Certainly he set no osamplo from boyhood to maturity that ■would mean reverence to woman in her highest attributes as woman. His troatement of his own mother forms a black record of his conception of filial duty. What his Empress has endured at his hands the Court circles of Berlin, and. later, the chronicles of State scandals, have testified. His cruel egotism has been exploited in a thousand ways from the hour when, at his father's death-bed. ho made his mother and sisters quasi prisoners of State, until the crowning perfidy of his invasion of Luxemburg and his insolence towards its brave young Duchess. Now tho history of mankind throughout the centuries has proved that the degradation of woman means also the degradation of man. His coarser nature

LITTLE LESS THAN SLAVES.

(By MRB DBSM ONT> HUMPHBKYS.)

needs tho softening and cnno*bling influences which she lias shown she possesses. When ho seeks to coarsen and humiliate her tho race sutlers. This is just what the Teuton has done for continues, and perhaps it explains the brutality and savageness and egotism of his conduct to-day. Women enfeebled and subservient cannot infhienco man. The beer-swilling, swaggering Hun is proof of this. He has shown himself absolutely deficient in chivalry, or honour, or mercy. The&o are, virtues cssentially instilled. by woman, and tho fruits not only of her reaching, but her influence. That such teaching and iufiueiici! have had no place in tho curriculum of German education or Gorman home life explains fully why the unleashed savages of 1914-16" have behaved as they have done. And it is not the driven and doped soldier that one can blame so much as their officers and trainers. It is they who wore the teachers of unnnmablo infamies—who saw in war but lust and loot and bloodshed. It is they who, glorying in intellectual emancipation, threw all decency aside and showed tho world that fearsome brute, " the Superman." Their Frankenstein is dead, but ha left this monster of his creation behind, and all with ono accord have fallen down and' worshipped it. From tho swaggering Kaiser in his capital to the swaggering private in his "Bier-haus" that cult and contaminated all whom it touched. Tho normal _ man , wished to become something abnormal. Ho was in hasto to grasp what was far abovo his comprehension—to destroy what had gone before and replace it with an incomplete substitute. But this has meant leaping from negation to affirmation without a sure footing on tho other sido of the harrier. AN APPALLING DOCTRINE. Could anything be more harmful for general acceptance than the doctrine that there should be no belief in morals; that there is no immutable rule estate lishing good and evil; that " nothing is true," but "all things ars lawful"? This is tho teaching which resulted in the war cry of Deutsehland über alios," and the frenzied passions of a once splendid nation. For, looking back at those early mem u ories of which I have spoken, at the beautiful cities, the works of art, the wonderful music, tho splendid military giants, I find it hard to reconcile my first ideas of Germany with the revealed Germauy of tho past two years. At times I fancy this war" is but a hideous nightmare, that I shall wake one day and say, " It really never happened. But, alas! it is very real, and it has happened, and wo owe its happening in a great measure to tho false teaching of Nietaschke's perverted intellect and the absolute lack of feminine influence exerted for moral ptirposs; for the cultivation of human virtues, and tho placing of high and holy ideals boforo man, To deny the existence of a does not provo it does not exist; hut it lessens faith in good, and lowers the standard of b'ljxh thinking. Tho Teuton awaking suddenly to the call of his new god, camo to the conclusion that Eurooean civilisation must bo called to order and revised by might of arm*. With a confusion of ideas he yet grasped firmly the standard of his own super-ex-cellenco. It would bo doing a kindness to the world to impress its benighted peoples the seal of the New Culture. But tho New Culture hejng totally lpposed to the Old, it would bo necessary to overthrow and destroy, and then reconstruct on a new basis. Their prophet had said, " Why truth rather than error? Why pood rather than evilP WTiy not be wholly free, wholly immoral; a law to ourself instead of a follower of others' laws?" All these motaphysical entities which had been so long reverenced as "God." "Truth, "Honour." "Self-sacrifice" were merely phantoms of imagination. It was best to get rid of them and on the dead ashes of their graves build up the New Man with the "will to tho "power to conquer," the faith in himselt and his invincibility, which is hieher than all preconceived' morals. The New Man. of course, would have nothing to do with the Old Past; with treaties, and bonds, and obligations; with loyalty and truth; with anything so commonplace as promises, so oldfashioned as honour. A race of masters must rule a race of slaves. Tho Teuton was to be master of the world, therefore ho would act as best suited his seU-promised sovereignty. Hero we have a creed promulgated, and a raco ripe for it 3 acceptance. A race of men proclaimed heroes from their cradles; worshipped and spoilt by women, the tools of a tyrannical philosophy, and tho disciplo of a cult which proclaimed thorn as beyond good and evil; superlative and supreme: self-en-dowed by past ages of glory, the heroes of a new epoch of civilisation. Was there not a wifo, a mother, a sweetheart, a friend, to lay a gentle hand" upon the bragging mouth, to bid the boaster pause and think before enacting Samson in the Temple and enutulfing himself and those who followed him in universal ruin P It would seem not. And had there been, would the swaggering hero have condescended to listen to one whom he long ago placed in the scales of a lower creation? Would ho not say, as he had ever said: "Woman has no place in the counsels of man. Her part is to obey, and applaud ; to believe that whatever ho does is right, because he does it." It is this super-blindness of Germany which has led her into quagmires of mistakes, which has proved again and again that her estimate of men and actions is oho only founded on her own conviction that that estimate must be correct because it is hers. Under cer-

tain circumstances she would act in a particular way. Well—there aro the circumstances. Why don't her enemies act in that way? AMAZED BY GERMAN LIES. The world has been puzzled and amazed by the persistence with which the- German ha* lied through the Press, thvough the mouths of others, and through his own mouth. But the World has not vet learnt to acept the creed of Super-manity. If it had, the riddle would ho solved at. once. Tor the. Teuton says to himself: "There is no difference between a. lie and the truth if I am speaking. I want people to believe a certain thing has happened. It i=> to their advantage, and their peace of mind that they should believe it. Therefore, I say it has happened.''^ It did not, of course, occur.to English minds to buy up half the journals of Turkey and Greece, and America and India, and any noutral country ihat was open to bribery. Had she done so the world would have known something of our successes. As it is, it has chiefly learnt of our failures. Germany has scored all aloug tho line because •mo considers her own interests are paramount to those of the rest of the world, and any method is permitted if it can make the world believe this! It must bo .1 splendid doctrine—this AllHigh, All-Supreme, All-Perfect doctrine of the Superman—this steadfast faith in the Lie Offensive which flies broadcast over tho habitable globe and cannot be proved a lie because we others are too proud, or too indifferent, to grapple with its ingenuity. Tho strong and powerful are always right; they intend to be victors, therefore they proclaim themselves victorious. Why troublo about the value of words? Leavo that to women, or to fools, who value scraps of paper more than a million lives! Imbued with such feelings, armed by such faith in his own invincibility, is it any wonder tlio Teutonic soul dreamt of world-conquest, and resolved to cast aside any pre-accepted theory of Right and Honour as mere obstacles in the path of Desire. All the misery and frightfulness ho lias caused and will continue to causo is hut tho fruit of a pernicious doctrine- enthusiastically accepted and disastrously obeyed. But let us not forget that the soil bad been prepared by generations of women, w-ho had enjoyed a shameful slavery 83 wives opd mothers of Belf- [ created heroes'; whoso pots and kettles and kitchens meant moro to them than true morality, or freedom df thought, lor intellectual- advancement. They as willing slaves brought into tho world tho fruit of slavery—had chosen to obey ratbor than to influence, and sent their young sons forth unwarned and tin* protected to achieve their moral downfall in any den of infamy they might select. It is only from Cause that wo get Effect.' In tho brutal degenerate savage who has endeavoured to show us tho reel meaning of war, we may read back to tho training school of his nursery, or tho weak-minded, flaxenhaired'doll who plighted her troth in a flutter of ecstasy at the mere thought of a uniform! Simple things; Insignificant things. But from such things has sprung the demoralisation of a na,tion.