FOUR TIMES ROUND THE WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 4 July 1907, Page 4

FOUR TIMES ROUND THE WORLD.

A WOMAN'S VIEW. !XTERESTIXi;~OISSEUVATIONS. "I would like to revisit most places where 1 have been, but Saghalien ("Island of the Lost') is one where 1 would not seek to go again," said Miss A. L. A. Murcutt, F.U.U.S., to a Post representalive Hie other day. She is a lecturer and writer, whose name is widely known in the English-speaking world. Australia is her native land, lint the; world is her country. Four times she has been round the globe, and she has seen so uiany places that she considers it wouil be easier to make a list of the omissions than the commissions. Sli3 lias been globe-jotting, rather tlmn glolietratting, for her eyes have been fixed on the men and women and their ways of living in all the countries that she has traversed. She has examined the earth from a geographical, social, ethical and other points of view, and has presented the spectacle to many tens of thoi sands of others by means of the l*res> and the platform. She incidentally represents I'earsou's Magazine.Pearsons Weekly, M.A.P., the Royal, the Rapid. Home Xotes, and other publications. Miss Murcutt claims that she is the only British woman who has ever visited Saghalien, and she reached that desolate island in the days before the Russo-Jap-anese war. A canny Scot had managed to find his way to that bleak island, and comfortably made a fortune by employing Japanese to capture herrings, which teemed in the adjacent seas. The fish were treated chemically, and exported as a fertiliser to various countries. The [ Scot's partner was a Russian who lived with his Polish wife in a solid slab hut. fortified against attack, for there were . 23,01X7 desperadoes—Russian prisoners—on the island, including 13,000 who had ' been transported for murder. Even the woman slept with a couple of revolvers . under her pillow, and she told Miss Mur cutt that sentries, giwn to perpetual singing, were always on guard at night. ' If the watchmen stopped singing, she would wake up instantly, and her two re- [ vol vers would lie up at the ready. The war, however, has changed all that. ' Talking aliout Japan, Miss Mnrcutt spoke glowingly about the national vir- : tile of loyalty—loyalty to the Mikado, 1 loyalty of friend to friend. Woman's I cardinal virtue was. obedience, and man's i was filial devotion. During the war, she said, one woman urged her son to go, and ' for his country. He did not go

and gave no reason. The woman was distressed, and said to her neighbors she was the mother of a coward, and cowardice was the most abhorred of all human failings. She was under an impression that her son was of independent means, but her friends explained that liiial devotion—a desire to support bis mother—kept the son in Japan. The woman straightway committed suicide to give her son no muse for absence from the fighting front. In the list of potentates of .Japan nine have been women, says Miss Murcutt. The first Japanese eonipieror of foreign territory was a woman, the Empress Jinga. who overran Korea, and so prepared the way for the civilising of Japan by the entry of philosophers and other learned men from the China side. The court ladies wrote the classics of Japan, and brought the native jargon into literary - form, filter Confucianism, which implied that woinan was the chattel of man, lowered the status of woman in Japan, but she was rapidly recovering her pride of place. Japan was recognising—a» every nation desiring greatness must recognise--that woman mu-t lie held in due esteem. .She talked about the part of women, from the Empress downwards, had played In the war by organising Ited Cross Societies, and went on to deserilie how the children were tilled with the national spirit by the taels of the noble Samurai and by vi-it* to historic spots. Referring to China, Hiss Murcutt declared that the Chinese were not oppose 1 to real Christianity but they resented political movements which they held inseparable from some missionary enterprises. Thence"came the Boxer risings, which unfortunately, inflicted suffering I and death on the wrong persons. China ) had a thoroughly organised democracy. Every village had its batch of educated men, who took good care to let the populace know altout the doings of the "foreign devils" in and out of China. These men were the filters through which "news" went to the people, and so the masses were kept in touch with the doings and undoings of the West. ' "The cities of Great Britain are cont gested nerve centres," continued the visitor, breaking fresh ground. Piloted by a couple of detectives, she investigated the slums of Glasgow one night, and found them a heartrending picture. In other cities, too, she had seen the slum side, and the squalor and degradation were not only beyond the scope of words to describe, but above the power of the mind to imagine, unaided by the actual spectacle. She was not confident that I jelief would come in the old lands themselves, but salvation would l>c achieved by emigration to the younger countries of the Empire, longing eyes were turned towards New Zealand, but the geographical ]M)sition of these islands deterred many people from undertaking the journey. In Britain, states Miss Murcutt, the old idea that it is a degradation for woman to earn her own living is passing away, but the notion that woman is Ijom for the side object of finding a lm - band is dying hard, though it is dying. In America the traveller found that the women there were self-reliant: they would go through fire and water to achieve an object. "Sclf-posscs-cd?" she liked American women for their would undertake to show the Almighty how t" ran the universe. - ' Generally, she liked Amei'iacn women for their sprightliness and independence of spirit. but there were sonic who-c methods of advertising themselves were repugnant. Miss Murcott will lecture in New Plymouth on the 7th, Sth and 9th i»st.