The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1918 WOMEN AFTER THE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1918 WOMEN AFTER THE WAR.

(With wnich is incorporated Tbe Taihape Pout f-ad Walcnui-io Newu).

From early Victorian times woman has been the subject of much inquiry; the state and condition of society when the last prc-Victorian king left the throne of England was reflected in the state and condition in which women lived. Those people who have troubled to read social history of that time will have been convinced that the status of woman generally in those days was anything but conducive to the stability, health and longevity of the race generally. A paragraph appearing in a lately received London paper should cause every reader, who makes any .profession to care about what state society may drift into as a result of this great war, to stop and ponder. The stony sophistry of the paragraph is not calculated to aid in solving the social problem, but rather to aggravate it. Woman is to have the franchise, giving her an equal voice in deciding the nature ot governments that are to control the Empire, which means that woman was pre-destined to become a mighty factor in unravcl- ; ling the whole social tangle that is destroying the race and weaving from , the scattered and dishevelled skeins a new, more just and humane fabric, i The paragraph referred to states: — ."War has always produced its own ' type of women. The present Armageddon is on so gigantic a scale that it must, of necessity, bring about the upheaval of everything old and the substitution of everything new; but one wonders if an appreciable num- , ber of women will again degenerate, I after this present conflict, into the tiresome and expressionless nonentities j they were before the war or whether I they will become indefatigable Bolsheviks." It is not difficult to deter- ' mine what trail of polities the writer lof this paragraph follows from the ] brutal cynicism of his effort. It J clearly indicates that there is still a ! large class which fears the voice of [ woman in politics. It is realised that I the power woman weilds will be diaI metrically opposed to the unnatural, I dehumanising pq,wer with which that j class would, in its insane selfishness, I bring down in ruins the whole social : fabric and plunge the Empire into ! social chaos. To note how the greatest social changes of the world have come about causes one to marvel, and be it particularly observed that sometimes reforms (have aome from searrifying revolution; a rude Alaric or Attila turns up the foundations and changes the whole trend of social standards and events; old social order is destroyed, rendered of no use, an obsolete castaway. The writer of that paragraph has had sufficient intelligence to see that something of the kind is happening in his day and, in his- terrible fear, he insults and satirises woman. He blankly admits that man has made a complete mess of things social end yet he becomes desperate with the thought that woman has to be called in to salve and rehabilitate the wreck that fills the social expanse before him, the wreck for which man, and man alone, is responsible and blameworthy. He wonders whether women will again degenerate, after this war, into the tiresome and expressionless nonentities they w-ere, or whether they will become indefatigable B'olsheviks. The man's self-interrogation is of such an outrageous character a'3 to create a thousand wonders in the minds of his readers, the foremost among them being the wonder whether he ever had

a mother or sister. We -wonder how the man wdio ever looked into the .face of a loving mother, a beautiful mouiory of fondness and affection, a fjeft embodying all that we can conceive of heaven, could ever fall so low in his estimate of the' sex from which he came. Our Empire's misfj.tnne is that in every part of it, New Zea land not excepted, thfi.-? are woman despisers, made so b/ the knowledge that woman is coming in + o her own, and that her power w'U nromprly destroy the huge structu-'-s of oppression, extortion and starvation with which man's unnatural selfishness is crushing society into debilitation and death. The history of the operations of militarism, of trusts and combines is a record of man's utter failure to establish an£ maintain a healthy moral, viril 0 social structure and woman now demands the franchise that primal right and justice endowed her with, but which man's selfishness deprived her

of, so that she may correct the social errors which man has fallen into, :.nd

bring about a condition in which none shall starve, in which none shall become physical wrecks, a c'onditij.-i in which, when the State calls, there shall be no phyicial unfits to defend it from the invader and enslaver. Our

I present day shop f office and factory laws :for the protection and hotter care of women and girl employees are I not primarily accreditable to man. In J the early Victorian era, a young Queen was alarmed when it became known to her that women were working eighteen hours a day in shops, dressmaking factories, and at >cKAJ work, and through her influence a Royal Commission was set up to enquire into the state in which wompb, young people and children were e.n- ---| ployed. Great physicians an.l sir- ! geons gave evidence before that com-

mission ,amongst them being Sir James Clark, physician to the Queen. He testified that the work and the mode of life was such as no human constitution could long bear, nothing could be more destructive of health laud consumption was evidently .a chief result. The Commission's Report alluded to the unnatural lau-iur women had to perform in their efforts to keep body and soul together; their bodies were 'distorted; they wura subjected to harsh and tyrannic treatment; , had coarse and insufficient food, these and many other disabilities clearly demonstrated to the Commission that the condition of women needed urgent reformation. To-day we read Lloyd George's statement about the state of society in Britain, and our wonder is that Lloyd George or any other sane person should expect to find anything different in Britain's man-power than what Military Medical Boards did find. After Queen Victoria's Commission with its startling, shameful revelations, and its humane findings, what has man done to improve the social condition of the masses? Man did nothing effective, and while social upheaval and possible revolution faces him, he must perforce call in the aid of women, because the masses demand that woman shall be enfranchised to perform that in which man has failed. The health of the race has been undermined by man's greed, and woman is receiving a mandate from millions of sufferers to assume her natural sphere as guardian of the race's health and upbringing. While selfobsessed cynics wonder whether women will again degenerate into tiresome, expressionless nonentities or become indefatigable Bolsheviks, women will be working in the high sphere for which nature ordained them; they will be retrieving the social wreck so lucidly and forcefully outlined by Lloyd George, which man lias by giving full play to a consummate greed and lust brought the British Empire to. It is only man's vulgar nature and notions that has crushed woman into a life of inanition; a rude Attila has put the test upon man's work in social structure/ and it has crumbled under the strain. Now the united voice of the masses demands that woman shall become the chief reformer. The hope of society to-day is woman; the hope of the age, to rescue it from revolution, is woman. The state of our social fabric is not hopeless, unless woman's feelings and character arc perverted by the men who wonder whether, after this war, women will again degenerate into tiresome, expressionless nonentities, or whether they will become workers in the ranks of B'olsheviks.