THE WOMAN OF TO-DAY.

Otaki Mail, 22 December 1919, Page 4

THE WOMAN OF TO-DAY.

Mr Justice Darling, at the Old Bailey, asked whether- it was a criminal offence for a man not to keep his wife in order. It might have, shocked St. Paul intensely, he said, but even in St. Paul's days there were wives who did not obey their husbands; otherwise he would not have exhorted them to do so. But at ilic present time for a man to tell his wife what she ought to do might well be to hold him up to public ridicule and contempt. In these t days of the Married Wonum’s Property Act and the enaanchisement of woman, and when some women read everything except St. Paul, could a man be said to be a criminal because he could not make his wife feed the children when they ought to be fed 1 It was all very well to say, “You must take your horse to the water,” but it would be a different matter if the law said, ‘‘You must go to prison if you don’t make him drink.” According to tho law of former times and to-day, continued his lordhip, a man was presumed to exercise control in his own household; but whether the law to-morrow would not exactly reverse that position he would not venture to say.