CONFERENCE SIR INGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 18 August 1909, Page 86

CONFERENCE SIR INGS.

By Jessie Mackat.

Within thnee- months there have been two notable international parliaments or women-^-the Woman Suffrage Alliance at London, %he> National Council's Conference at Toronto. The report of the former has jusl 'reached New Zealand, amd it shows what a vast amount oi work has been organised My women the world over since the " International Suffrage Alliance held its first conference nve years ago. Twenty-one nations are now represented, and hundreds of delegates bailing from realms as distinct as Iceland and Australia, answered the rollcall at St. James's Hall on the 26th of April. The president (Mrs Carrie Chapman Catt) came from New York ; her ! hands were held up by the two vice- i presidents (Mrs Mnlhcent Fawcett, 14L.D., of London, and Mias Annie Euruhjelm, oi Finland). The Sunday previous had seen a mighty muster of delegates in St. Paul* to hear the large and comfortable words which the great-hearted- Canon Scott Holland food to say to those sisters ii council. The canon's citadel of faith is TK> _» e3 *? • Jeriol *o of the plain whose mouldering walls are a-topple at the first sound of the rain's horn. But whai I would Knox have thought bad his eyesi beheld a congregation of men— men only — filling a London church to ba edifiea by a woman pastor? This golden-tonguea orator" has bat to lift her hand to command an audience on either side the Atlantic; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw is known wherever great women meet in world-wide fellowship. . Canon Scott Holland speaks his words of welcome on Sunday ; on Monday the secular powers of Labour and Parliament bless the conference in the , hearteome in- j formal words of Mr Ramsay Macdonald. As a body, however, Britain's six hundred sit sternly aloof in St. Stephen's, pretending not to hear the ghostly thunder of the new age knocking at their 1 doors. But the thunder is insistent for all that ; it is rolling, rising from the dense roadways on cither side of that mile-long procession winding its way into th* huge Albert Hall. In that mile ot pulsing, packed, vivid humanity, whose 1 thousand groups fuse steadily, as it were, into one mighty sinuous body, there is typified the industry of one-half of the world. Every woman's trade known to civilisation is passing by. The woman, farmer walks there with rake and -hoe ; th-a florid with posy and basket ; the cook with aprol and ladle ; the whitecapped waitress, the laundr^fs with her iiatirons ; the lacemaker. the jeweller, the :i -illiner, th» typist, the engraver — not one is missing There, too, in shining hood and gown, walks th,a graduate, the lecturer, the surgeon, the physician. The joHroaliet and the author go ununiformed, but phalanxed firmly .with the rest. Surely it is to the?e smooth-handed; graceful leaders— in art and science that the palm of public recognition must jap to-day. But no ! Who is it that" is waited for like a qneen? For' whom are the empty seats of honour reserved? Ah, 1 we have came to humanity's bedrock ; the Woman's Parliament stands with I bowed head for the new-old Mater Dolorota of this toil-weary world. The lessons

of the Matier Dolorosa file past — wometf' whose gracious forms were marred ana starved at Mammon's gate, and no one regarded. They come in piteous myriads — the chainmakers, the pit-brow women, the smoke- dark women of the Black Country, their sleeves rolled above the elbows, their heads shawled like outlanders, their faces dazed -with, sunlight and surcease of work. And now they, ■have filled the empty seats of honour, ana white uniform and scarlet hood range themselves meekly m Oehind. Was there ever such a uinity since tbe shrouded days of the catacombs?

Later in tlw week anothes." curious woman's demonstration fills the Albert Hall. It is /the anmy of the suffragettes, the Woman's Social and Political Undoir, of which the militant fame has gone abroad to the .ends of the eartta. And this time the conference, as a conference, takes no side as between these Amazons and fch6 vast machinery of the law they, have defied. But the unofficial iseats are crowded with foreign women, leaning forward to catch the burning -words of Ghrisfcabel Pankiurst and fchA mdll giriy Aomje Kenciey, " whom some have - ■callecr another Joan of Arc There, too, 6tands the young and eloquent president of the union, 'Mrs Pethiak-Lawrenoe, who, with 1 her husband, has done so much for tha cause by tongue and pen. It is a -great? day— a day of forecast ; these hundreds 0$ white ;; robed women have all -.seen the blank, inner walk of prison; the prison! mark, unforgettably' bitter, is still on each. But they have not. come to weep over scars: they have come to receive the little Order of the Prison Gate that each has won from the union. Bach or these tiny barred pins given to-night wik • be handed down, like a Waterloo medal, in distant days when Englishwomen are free. . . There are doubtful, admiring, hesitating whispers up and down the visitors,' ranks as these daughters of revolution? unfold their campaign.^ "Surely," they say., "the suffragettes are to the suffrage movement what the Salvation Army is to the Church." It is the practical Yankee delegates who sympathise most -with the Amazons j they, too, have been opening the political oyster • for 40 years,, and their fingers are also sore. But the -conference has not come to behold or be beholden; it has come to confer. And these women of twenty-ona nations hava twenty-one tales to tell. Not in one of thess far lands has tha woman's banner gone down or suffered a lasting check. Some of them com© f rots' States where the old Teutonic honouring of women- has shaped the people's, thought ; in tbega the battle is wholly won, as in. Norway, or half won, as in Iceland and Denmark. Here comes in the hint of a pleasing - dilemma. The Al'iance holds its next quinquennial gathering in Stockholm — provisionally. But Sweden may have wiped that neceessity away before five years have passed, and than the Alliance must seek a' less favoured rendezvous. And the American women, viewing that possibility, said with sorrowful insistence, "Then come to us; -we shall need you for 40 -years yet." jjnt some have come from States where wonie^n have borne the heavier yoke. Yet even from mediaeval Servia and bureaucratic Russia come wo;xte of tireless, energy and hope. From South, Africa came mingled notes of cheer and disappointment. "The sturdy Dutch women. Conservative -though they be, a*e catching on tc the idea; and there is one strong friend among many in the Cape Parliament — Mr Cronwright, husband' of Olive Scbreiner. But there are strong hostile forces, the " coloured women's vote " has acted as a bogey, and the recent Draft Constitution has ignored the claims of women to vote in the new African federation, against which injustice the fair example of " Australasia Free," snows whiter -etilL

Sidelights are cast on the forward movement towards equality in church government; Switzerland apd Holland giving prominence to this phase of emancipation.

But perhaps the most significant token of true progress is the immense strengthen' ing of women's position as regards municipal government. The English victory of 1907, giving woman full municipal franchise, is a. hvge step ; and it has been paralleled in Iceland, Denmark, and other States (Norway and Finland are old news now) ; while in Sduth Africa, Canada, and the States immense strides have been made in local government. "She that is faithful in little," shall have much to rule over in time.

The conference week is over; but prejudice, monopoly, and privilege are shivering and drawing closer j all over the world is heard that ceaseless sound of marching feet; the women's banner is nnfurled wherever the free winoT blows, and all the coming age is. bound up in their victory.