Gift of £1,000 Refused

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 235, 23 December 1927, Page 5

Gift of £I,OOO Refused

VETERAN SUFFRAGELEADER TALKS OF ECONOMIC STRUGGLE

THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Mrs. Despard, the veteran suffrage leader, who has just celebrated her 80th birthday, was presented with a gift Qf £I,OOO by the women of Great Britain and other countries. Mrs. Despard handed this back to the committee to be used to endow a room at Crosby Hall, to be named afte.r her. The presentation took place in Caxton Hall, London, and Mrs. Despard, who was enthusiastically received on rising, said slie greatly valued the gift, and thanked old friends and new from her heart. She found the whole woman’s movement linked together with the binding thread of love. One could not expect the old enthusiasm to reappear; that had been the enthusiasm of a beginning, not to be repeated. The enthusiasm of to-day, which she hoped for among the younger women, was a different, but none the less valuable, enthusiasm. Some day she thought the vote might go. Parliament, as we know it now, might go; but the great spiritual force of love, which was the women’s movement, would go on from strength to strength. It would find its place in what she felt was the big struggle of the future, the economic struggle. She said it was a pleasure to recall old times, as she had done with old friends that evening; it was also a pleasure to look forward to see the young also finding the joy of standing shoulder to shoulder in a fight for right and justice.