Dear Sir,

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 27, 12 May 1947, Page 4

Dear Sir,

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters. WOMEN’S STATUS Sir, —Your recent article about Mrs P. von Geusau, the only woman member of the Public Service Commission of Inquiry on Women’s Status, is indeed interesting and her statements well worth serious consideration, as a right understanding of the true status of woman is essential to the well-being of our civilisation. Our minds naturally go back to the name “Pankhurst” in this connection, and the valiant efforts made by those women as suffragists in an unsympathetic and antagonistic age in England. . The. status of women owes much to the Pankhursts, and it is particularly interesting to read more about one of these pioneers in the fight for wor men’s rights. An article in a recent overseas periodical quotes from the British “Who’s Who” for 1945, which states: “Dame Christabel Pankhurst

... as one of the founders and leaders of the Women’s Social and Poli- ’ tical Union worked~for women’s enfranchisement; declared suffrage truce upon outbreak of war in 1914 (the first World War) in order to co-operate in the national war effort; is now active in heralding the personal, visible, and powerful Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as foreshown by the present signs of the times.” The article then states how Dame Pankhurst came to forsake politics: “She told in a newspaper interview how she had hoped that, with women having the * right of suffrage, things would be done better. But she had found that even women’s votes were not chang- - ing the order of this old world much. Then she caught.in the Scrip-, tures the idea that the only hope for the world was in Christ’s Second Coming. The burden to preach the near coming of the Lord became her lifework. Evidently she is still preaching that. message. In one of her books Miss Pankhurst tells of the longing in the suffragist ranks to do something to curb the preparations among the nations for war. She says: ‘Suffragists, in the days of their campaign, had not a doubt that the votes of women could and would bring about the pacification and harmonizing of the world. Alas! it is not so simple as all that ... In this world crisis, women are quite as unable as men are even to propound a saving policy, let alone carry it into effect. Shall we forget that the conflict is not between flesh and blood alone? The supernatural factor, must not be. "ignored.. Satanic intervention is the affairs, of humankind, satanic disturbance of world conditions, is a fact . . . The evil being so largely supernatural as to its cause, how can the- human effort of the woman voter overcome it? . . . The supernatural alone can challenge the supernatural, only the divine can conquer the satanic. So the new and ideal order cannot be, until the return of the divine King to establish God’s kingdom .. .Under His rule* the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.’—Christabel Pankhurst in “Some Modern Problems in the Light of Prophecy” 1924. edition, pages 46-48. The article I quote from then goes onto' state: “The experience of this lady, who had given her life to political reform and then caught the idea of the coming of our Saviour v as the true hope of the world, is illustrative of the experience of multitudes. Thousands of men and women who have looked hopefully to political and social reform—all good and worthy endeavour as a matter of worldly policy—have come to see that the one hope for humanity is in the gospel of Christ with its urge to men to seek the only power of reformation in the living Saviour. And in that gospel is the surepromise of an ending of the reign of evil and sin in this world ,to be brought about by the second coming of the Lord Jesus in. power and glory.” Yours etc., ." 2 ONWARD.