DEGRADING THEIR SEX.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1731, 23 April 1913, Page 3

DEGRADING THEIR SEX.

VIOLENT WOMEN SUTFRAGETTES. Sir,—Last week you published a letter signed "Uno AYlio Hates Violenco to Women." Your correspondent would have us believe that Mrs. Pankliurst "upholds in her person the gentleness and sweetness of the highest ideal of womanhood," Is it womanhood's highest ideal io burn houses, cut signal-wires, destroy letters, etc.? Thcro aru millions of women, not aloiio in lJritaiu, who realise that Airs. Pankliurst ITiis degraded their sex. your correspondent presumes to associate Mrs. l'aukhurst .with those nob!?, saintiy women, Elizabeth Fr.v and T'loreue'e Nightingale, women who shunned notoriety, and, so far as we know, did not consider they were "struggling in the sea of eeo'.ioinic and moral slavery," because they wero without voles. Then: "Airs, l'ankhurst stands for the abolition of the white slave trailic and sweating of women." In what way will tho giving of voles to women aifect Ihrse two causes? A liill for the suppression of the former has passed tho .1 louse of Commons. We New Zealand women have been enabled to voto for nearly twenty years. Are women and children" entirely protected here? According to Judge Edwards, crimes against women and children aro increasing in New Zealand. If granting votes to women will purge , tho laud, why has it not done so here? Have we lessened gambling and drinking? Ask the Inspector of Police. AVho were tlio worst offenders at AVaihi—men or women? and thoso women had- voles.

The. Suifragettea are not to be blamed for thinking .Mr. Asquith has betrayed them, after promising them a Franchiso Pill.' But when ho passed the Parliament Bill did ho not givo a pledge lo reform the Houso of Lords? ,I'hat pledge has beer, broken. Has ho "been hurled from office and branded as dishonourable?" llow could anyone expect ft promise to be kept by a Liberal Government which is trying to break up the union, rob a church, threaten an honourable profession with ruin, pry into the private affairs of anyone unfortunate enough to own land, while refusing tho right lo have their own business into? In women take more interest in public affairs than they do in .New Zealand. But in one instance men did the noblest work for women. On the Divorce Commission, the • women vol,3(1 for tho Majority Report; it was left to three men— •the Archbishop of York, Sir Lewis Diblin, and Sir AVilliam Anson—to guard tho rights of women and children, and try to preserve the sanctity of tho homo. Sir, if Mrs. Pankliurst and her misguided followers will continue to behave- as hooligans, would it not be wiso to shut them up in ah asylum, and not have their doings chronicled in tho papers. To such unbalanced, hysterical women notoriety is the breath of life; also .to those New Zcalanders who find, when they go Home, they aro nobodies, and obtain a little cheap notoriety by joining tho Suffragettes; to. tho infinite amusement .and contempt of their fellow colonists. How far from the ideal . Tliafc all the women of this English land, May be a steadfast, noble, saintly baud, Seeking in all, lcs 4 s to be great than good Fashioned after God's tvpe of womanhood. .-■> I am, ctc., ONE . WHO DISTEUSTS VIOLENT WOMEN. April 14.