"LORDS OF CREATION"

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 264, 1 July 1932, Page 3

"LORDS OF CREATION"

HAVE WOMEN AND MEN EQUAL CHANCES IN LIFE?, SEX ACHIEVEMENTS. LONDON, May 16. "The hate between the sexes can scarcely be extinguished," said some French philosopher. Through all the changes of the wrongs and rights of women there persists a suspicion on both sides that the other sex is given all the luck. There was a public debate the other day to settle the question. The form in which it was put was: Who gets the best out of life, man or woman? This may be called by precision as an evasion of the point, for it is possible that neither gets the best, that each sex, owing to the existence of the other, is condemned to a sad, bad time. Such an opinion has, in fact, heen maintained by many fathers of the ' church, philosophers, and other sages, One of the debaters differed in the good old way. Mrs. Elinor Glyn said that men had much the better chances because they had heen lords of ,creation from the beginning, and Mr. Gilbert Frankau said they had no chance at all because they were always working for women. For more than a century, at the least, the world has heard much of "the eonstraint put upon the natural * aptitude's and faeulties of women," to take Meredith's phrase for it, by the tyranny of men, and Mr. Frankau talks almost in the words of the reformed, domesticated Kathrina in "Tjhe Taming of the Shrew." The man "commits his body to painful labour" that the woman may "be warm at home secure and safe." Both these are true and potent pleas. The only objection to them nowadays is that they have no relation to the circumstances of large numbers of men and women. In the matter of education and the choice of a career hosts of women have now no more eonstraint put upon their natural powers than has the or- ■ dinary man. The number who get I satisfaction out of their advantages i may be small. But how many men [ malce out just the career they would | have chosen ? ; We all like to mistake the deficien- I cy of our own powers for lack of op- [ portunity. ■ Justice McCardie's Views. After his recent profound resear- ; ches into the advantages and respon- I sibilities of the modern wife, Mr. Jus- I tice McCardie was naturally selected ■ to sum up the debate. He made the I useful criticism that nohody had ex- ■ plained what is the best which can be j got out of life. His own definition was divided into ■ three parts — first, happiness; second, I the sense of achievem'ent; and, third, ! the sense of fulfilment. This is very j well, hut does it take us much fur- j ther? A man's sense of achievement is gratifted, let us say, by making money, or hy making a r^ime, a woman's by having a baby, or sacrificing herself to some quite worthless creature or cause. In these things, both men and women feel perfectly satisfied. How on •earth are we to decide which of them gets the hest out of life? As far as the satisfaction of the individual is eoncerned, the value of their work is little or nothing to, do with it. ' In content and happiness the ordinary person probably has the best of it. Who is going to prove to us that in rolling the lawn there is less sense of fulfilment than in writing "Hamlet"? If the benefit' to the world is the criterion the argument is equally doubtful. The mother of Virgil is as necessary as Virgil to the Virgilian hexameter. For my own part I think the whole dispute is founded on a fallacy — the strange delusion that there is any particular difference between a man and a woman.