THE NEW ARIADNE.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 232, 19 October 1914, Page 7

THE NEW ARIADNE.

(By Jessie M’Cleverly, in the “Woman Voter.”) Underlying the myths of ancient traditions are truth" which touch our iofticst modern ideals. Year after year a terrorised people sent annual tribute of youths and maidens to the Minotaur. At last I heseus, the man of action, came, and said, “This monster must be slain.’’ Hut he faltered and failed, and groped in the labyrinth, until Ariadne came to his help ; and only aft *1 she had provided him with a clue of thread did he find his victorious way to the monster, and the vile tribute was at once at an end. This golden cord of unity between man and woman runs through countless legends of classic ages. Each mutually accepts the help needed to perform a task to help humanity. The man does not say, “I am stronger, 1 am wiser, I need no help of yours. Keep to your own part in the* home.” No, he recognises the value of the woman’s resourcefulness, as differing from his, and fits it to his own to engine success. The creation of antagonism is the effect of all reforms, because reform, to be constructive, must be destructive. A great writer says: “The stroke of the heaviest hammer is dispersed in a large stone, and becomes almost imperceptible, and in every social progress the- great and only difficult work is the destruction of the past.**

Ilow few of us are wise enough to burn our boats behind us. We will not life a finger to lighten the dead weight that Nature drags along. The law of a past age must needs press with crushing force, with dwarfing limitations, before public consciousness awakens to action or tu.ns sleepily to accept the new boons which Theseus and Ariadne win from age to age*. In commercial questions, and tho c relating to property, etc., men ru. * that women are equal. Women receive no concessions in regard to such things as municipal rates, taxes, fines, subscriptions, fares, interest on money borrowed, rents, etc., because of their sex. On questions such as these there is no antagonism on the part of men, because women are paying ; they must pay in full. i»ut when women are earning, and ask the full wage, men s antagonism is aroused Sure ly

this must be because men forget that women pay in full. So, on points sue h a> payment for labour, marriage laws, protection of children, war, woman claims, and justly, the right to be heard. These subjects touch the roots and springs of life. To them she can bring entirely new knowledge and light, which man, by reason of his very masculinity, can never bring. Theseus may be the typical strong and brave man. His weapons may be deadly, his courage superb, his heart aflame with enthusiasm, to deliver the world. Hut he will grope blindly in the labyrinth until he takes Ariadne’s clue of thread in his hand. One of our great writers says:“Men have made weapons with which to destroy one another. Women have made the men who destroy and were destroyed. The physical creation of human life means to the male only a moment’s pleasure; to the female it means a strain such .is no knap-sac ked soldier on his longest march eve r endured. Women pay the first cost on all human life.”

Every woman, an actual or potential mother, knows the value of the thing she has created from her own flesh and blood, and ushered into life at the risk of her own. This is the deep, underlying force* of the modern woman’s aversion to war. Given her own way, she would put every other as*et into the scale before sacrificing human life. Through long ages she has created it, to see it poured out like water on the* battlefield.

If we grant war to have been inevitable during the slow evolution from primitive conditions, when selfpreservation w.i> the rwling instinct, if we grant that, nobly has woman borne her part of it, patiently and courageou* ly has she fulfilled her sex function to replace the slain. Hut now, with Intellec t enthroned above th: primitive instinct, she cries aloud that war must soon retire before the new light, and grovel with the old l>la< k gods. And in regard to all wasted human life, she lifts her voice to say: ‘‘lt shall no longer be so.” She* sees in every starved diseased child the wreck of her costliest labour. She says: “1 have given myself to the making of a soul. 1 have built a temple for the living tied, but the demons' of murder and lust and starvation and disease have defiled my work. I have

woiked to pour out the (onsetrated water ot life, but it is poisoned at it> spring. So, at last, woman, who tor the preservation of the race has attained to a higher moral law than man, stands now, in this modern axe ot intellect, side by side with him; not antagonistic, but strong to redeem him. All through the ..gcs that he has called hei hi> angel, his inspiration, the psychological completion of his higher self, he ha, jet deemed it eonsistent to retain one relic of his primitive hrute nature, and to supply victims for that Minotaur he has used human souls. Id the* future men and women it may seem an easy and natural step that the frightful evil of the* white slave trattle was grappled with and mortally wounded in the enlightened twentieth century. Numberless strong pure hearted men are helping to fight th»* monster now. It may be their names will be most prominent in the better laws that are coming, for, although the; women’s vote gives them new power, yet their share in the (fovernment will be a minor one for many years to come. Men of the future may belittle the pai t played by their faithful Arnicines, but the race will develop a new, clean life, such as it never lived befoie women came into their own. (lamaliel ot old appeased the antagonism against Jesus’ apostle- by saying, ‘ Refrain from these, and let them alone, for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought. Hut it it be of (»od, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found to tight even against Cod.” No truer or more fitting aigument could be advanced to support our Woman Movement.