SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1204, 12 August 1911, Page 10

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

An observer who was about the streets all Wednesday night, and who had been, about the streets all tho night beforo Kins Edward's Coronation, tells mo (suys a writer iu the Manchester "Guardian") that to his mind tho most significant thing in tho wholo affair was an extraordinary change that it revealed in tha attitude of the middle-class women. At the last Coronation (he says) thero were a fair number of women who sat out all night in tho streets, but theso were mainly middle-aged women of an unconventional type, with a few girls who had an air of lining (here without permission, and half-expectant of dreadful things. This time about half of tho immense crowd that lined Whitehall and tho Mall and Piccadilly from long beforo midnight wero middle-class women, moit of them in (heir twenties, and many of them still younger. Hero and there you could distinguish!, groups of twenty or thirty strong, who had evidently organised themselves for tho night—iu some cases they had spirit stoves. Thero wero many groups of naif a dozen lads and girls formed inlo littlo camps, but the majority consisted of girls in pairs. It seemed as though half tho teachers, clerics, typists, and shop girls of London—that is to say, tho average suburban girl of the time—had taken things iulo their own hands, and with or without the consent of the homo authorities had claimed tho same freedom as their brothers have. There they were in their 1 thousands, sleeping with their heads on ono another's lap, or mora boldly in groups stretched besirlo tho railings of tho Green l'ark or sitting on stools, when the light had coine, reading newspapers (the newspaper rather than the novel seems now the favourito reading) with, out tho slightest apprehension of Mrs. Grundy or noctural London.

The Coronation of Georgo V should-in-deed be a handy date for (ho Fecial historian dealing with the really significant things of our times. This demonstration of tho freedom that women havo wrung from themselves as well as from man is, of course, only another symplem of tho most striking movement of (ho century, of which tho struggle for the vole is tho centre, and the organisation of theso little parties as well as their sensible equipment (in which jerseys and jersey caps and head scarves wero conspicuous) w,»rn very obvious signs of tho suffrage discipline.