PULLING THE STRINGS.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1917, Page 6

PULLING THE STRINGS.

INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. ; CASE OF MRS. OORNWALLIS-WEJST. The San Francisco Argonaut thinks that the discomfiture of Mrs. CornwallisWest as the result of a reprimand bv a British Court of Enquiry mint be rather a shock to the traditions of a co untry that has taken the subteranean interferences of fashionable women with the Army almost as a matter of course. The lady in question did not more than privately express her wish for the promotion of a volunteer sergeant, and Lord French seems to have" regarded it as equivalent to an order, since he'hastened to obey. So, Lord French himself is included in the reprimand, and may now reflect at leisure on the new order of things which prohibits women from playing favorites in Army discipline with which they should have nothing to do. That the interposition of Mrs. Cornwallis West involved a gross injustice to another soldier does not seem to have weighed with her at all. She now wishes it to be undestood that she will have nothing more to do with public affairs, an act of renunciation that should not cost her much considering the part that she has played in them for the last twenty years.' The official circles of' Europe are full of women like Mrs. Cornwallis-West. women who play quite as real a part in the government of their countries as do secretaries, of State and Cabinet officers Lord Randolph Churchill owed a large part of his political success to his clever American wife, this same lady who nas now fallen under the ban of official censure. The British 'Prime Minister who is selecting his Cabinet pays nearly as much attention to the capacity of the wives of his nominees as to' that of the nominees themselves. A Cabinet Minister is gravely handicapped without i wife who understands affairs of State ■'id who is able to co-operate intelligents 'n the wiles of domestic and foreign •maey. Russia is famed for her un-

.al women diplomats, who take up ■icir residence in foreign capitals and who are always ready to say the word m season, and to say it brilliantly, on behalf of their country's interests. At the same time we may wonder if the political women of England have given their loyalty to their parties or to their men folk. Lady Randolph Churchill, for example, was a Tory of Tories, while her fjrst husband wis alive. There was no Keener feminine- mind in the Tory party than hers. She was at the head of many political organisations and a constant ornament,' physical and mental, to the party platforms when speeches had to be -uttered or pleas made. But when Lord Randolph died his. widow instantly, and with equal fervour, espoused the political cause of their son, Winston Churchill, who had now become a Radical, and who bid fair to be as much of a firebrand in the cause of reform as his father had been in the cause of Conservatism. She made no explanation. No recantation seemed to her to be necessary. She attached herself to the man of the family as a matter of course, and lent the whole of her peculiar powers to his political advancement.