SEX AND SUCCESS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 19

SEX AND SUCCESS

TRADITION DISCOUNTED

An eminent bishop, preaching to the National Congress of Women at Manchester, regretted the indications of sex war, while sympathising with the wider range of opportunity and activity open to women to-day, writes Eosita Forbes in.an exchange. There will be no sex war so loug as men will consent to lead. . • Since 1918 man has done his best'to slough his responsibilities. After' four years in the trenches he was tired. He wanted to have a good time. Peace waa a far more difficult problem than war, and, for the first few years, the avei-ase

man didn't feel like tackling it. , He'd, done his bit. . He felt, vaguely, that it was quite time somebody else did something. • . ■ .

Woman .agreed. She proceeded to make herself first; conspicuous 'and then useful. Whether she-is invaluable remains to be seen. -

But the circumstances which produced all this talk of sex equality and sex,war were abnormal, and they are passing. 'My sex stepped - into . the breach and ■ filled-it gallantly, but I doubt if more than one woman in ten rrally enjoys earning' her own • living. She'd much rather some man did it for her. Women are just as keen about their husbands, homes, and children as they were 20 years ago, but they have learned a new religion—the worship of success. ~ . NO TIME FOR FAILURES. In Victorian days failure was crowned with rosemary and rue. It had a sentimental value. Commercial suecess'was considered almost coarse. Women wero brought up to foster the illusion of gentility,, and Dundreary whiskers were more important than credit. . .... To-day people worth their salt don't bother about keeping up appearances. They want something much more solid. They want success. Tradition is out of date. It is the ago of the sclf-mado man, because he can get right down to the roots of. life. He is not blinded by other people's experience. Tradition received its'death-blow at the last election. If we are to-believe that the women's vote had anything to do with the Labour victory, then it was the women who put a new class into power. They discarded, without hesitation, numbers of brilliant and goodlboking young men who were considered "sitters" and they voted solidly for practical experience.

Tradition teaches one how to die, but not how to live, and it is my sex 'which has always had its nose held down to the grindstone of life. Women are forced to be practical, because they are the housekeepers, with the spending and saving power of the nation in their hands. Small wonder then that they refuse to acknowledge the shadow of authority without the substance of support. .

There has been a great deal' of talk about the "new woman" and how she appeals to men. Isn't it time we realised that women are on the look out for the "new man?" They want leaders who can show reason for their position. It is. the self-mado men and women who count to-day, because they have not forgotten their beginnings. Traditional Toryism is severely handicapped because it is imbued with the feeling that it is neither begotten nor' created, that it had no beginning and can have no end! ' . SNOBBERY IS DYING. "What a man does, or is capable of doing, is infinitely more important today than who were his forefathers unto the third and fourth'generation. Snobbery is dying under the impetus of realism, and it is women who are responsible for the new standard of values. At present the worship of success includes too much that is merely spectacular, but it is a step'_in the right direction. The Greeks • worshipped physical fitness, the Vieiprians respectability and the peerage, the diehards. worship authority, arid modern woman worships the self-made man! Woman now knows too much, about kitchens and nurseries and household accounts to be hypnotised hy public or private charms. In politics she wants to.see men who can save money for the nation, and in her home she wants someone who cau make it faster than she eau herself.

We'arc told that women used to be dolls, drones, or drudges. Perhaps, but men were children, playing with an authority to which' they had no other claim than that of muscle. Since women earned the dubious right to sit in Parliament and stand in omnibuses, they have become individualists, so far as a deep-rooted" maternal instinct will allow. If men would rule to-day, they must cease to be children, as women have ceased to bo playthings.