LADY ASTOR ON LOVE

Shannon News, 19 November 1926, Page 2

LADY ASTOR ON LOVE

Lady Astor, member of the Imperial House of Commons, sat in the midst of 25 American reporters recently and defined love, as she knows it as a mother of and as a.politician. > "There is mother love and there is smother, loye," she started off, in reply to the first of hundreds of questions fired at her. "The latter," she said, according to the New York "Evening- World's" version of the interview, "is what says, *I want everything for my own children and I don't care whether those of other people" get anything at all.' But mother love declares, 'I love all children and I want them all to have the best possible chance.' * "Conditions for, children have improved enormously in England since women had the vote. Men are so s inuch more respectful of them. •'A WlioUe Time Jol>.'! Then Lady Astor spoke of the, other side of mothering—the private, not the public Qdnd. She said she did>not blame modern young people for anything, they did—she blamed their parents, paternal control should commence in the 'cradle. I know what I am talking about, for I have six extremely vital children, any one of whom Avould be out of hand to-mor-row if 1 would allow it. You have to keep after children every minute, physically and spiritually. "Children are a whole time job. This is a subject on Avhich I feel very strongly. One thing which I have observed" during my present visit is that there are more spoiled children in America than in England. "I have said I do not like to see young children working. But almost' any sort of/ work for children is better than letting them grow up with the idea that there is no Avork i— the word for them to do. I want my children to choose careers which are individually suited to them, but I want all of them to live up to the ideal of service to others." Jazz—and Paint. Jazz and make-up for the young do not meet with Lady Astor's approval. "Isn't it ridiculous," she exclaimea, "the way some of those young girls paint up their faces. If that's the sort of thing they want to do I suppose they'll do it like the people in the last days of Pompeii. Now if I yantdd to paint my old face" (she naade a charming grimace) "it would be another matter. But it's not for young girls to do." As to jazz, she said that the Negro was*a spiritual singer, and you have taken his spiritual songs and put all your own wickedness into them and called them jazz. Lady Astor was as'ked if a woman could be a proper mother of children and at the same time hold another '"lt can be done," she replied. "But it means giving up everything else. I never leave my children during their holidays—that's why I do so much less speaking than most of the members of the House of Commons. When they are at home I get up every morning and have mV breakfast.with them

and get them started right. I do nothing in society—not that I ever cared about it, anyway, I don't even go to a movie."