The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity. WELLINGTON, NOV. 18. 1916. POLICE WOMEN.

White Ribbon, Volume 22, Issue 257, 18 November 1916, Page 9

The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity. WELLINGTON, NOV. 18. 1916. POLICE WOMEN.

In another column we give a report of the deputation which waited upon the Minister for Justice in regard to the appointment of police women. We are confident that the women of New Zealand will feel indignant at the scant courtesy accorded to that deputation by the Minister. Women representing large and important women’s societies certainly merited a careful and understanding hearing. Is the Minister really so dense that nothing but a surgical operation will get into his head the difference between the police women asked for by the deputation and the increase of police matrons promised by the Minister? Did he really thnk that intelligent women were asking for women to be allowed to join the Armed Constabulary? Or was the introduction of the Royal Irish Constabulary one of the Minister’s little jokes? For long we have been

puzzled to account for the presence of the Hon. A. L. Herdman in a Reform Cabinet, but we think perhaps he is there to apply the brake and see that the Reform team do not drag the carriage of State too rapidly along this strange new road of reform, for new it is to the erstwhile Conservative party. Vet we have never seen any sign that the team led by the cautious Mr Massey and the shrewd Mr Allen were dragging the State chariot along at any great rate. Every other part of the British Empire has advanced along the road of Temperance reform, while New Zealand is held back by a so-called Reform Cabinet. New South Wales has its police women, Adelaide its women J.P.’s, Canada women Magistrates for Children’s Courts; United States, after experiencing the valuable help of women in the State Legislatures, have now for the first time sent women to the National Congress. Surely the New Zealand Ministry needs whip and spur, and not a brake. We would strongly recommend them to leave the Minister of Justice in the stately and aristocratic seclusion of a Conservative Ministry; he is quite out of place in a Reform Cabinet. In fact, if he gofcs to the poll at next election as .1 Reform candidate, we advise women voters to look at his record while in office, and say does it not proclaim him a wolf in sheep’s clothing.