WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 283, 18 January 1919, Page 8

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.

LX TRACTS FROM SPEECHES IN HOUSE OF LORDS.

By the Archbishop of Canterbury. 1 deprecate in the strongest way the allegation that those who are in ta

vour of women s votes want to concede them as .1 reward to the women for having behaved well in the war. It is nothing of the kind. That is a complete misconception of v aat we mean by the trust of the franchise. It is not a plum as a reward to somebody foi being good. It is the discharge of a great and serious responsibilit} which people have to exercise as a trust given to them by the nation to exercise for the nation when they have shown that they are ft* and worthy to t.ike .1 responsibility of the kind. It is given to women as a recognition of the part they are nowtaking in our national life from top to bottom; not for the part* they have taken in doing women's work —nursing, and the rest —but for the part which in our whole social system, fabric, operations, administration, they are taking to-day, permuted through and through as these things are by the agency and the activity and the effective daily work of women. lam not speaking of the fact that women have nursed our wounded men, or that they have clone the things which we all knew from the beginning they would do. And the Bishop of London Although for many years I was very doubtful as to the support of woman suffrage—it was hardly a tactful way to convert us by burning down our churches or putting bombs in our homes and cathedrals —I have been wholly converted to the support of this movement l*y the belief th.it wc need women in the reconstruction of the world after the war.

What are the burning cpiestions that are coming up after the war in these working-class cjuarters ? The other day 1 was at a Sunday conference of a thousand men in the Last Knd of London, who were conferring on the disgraceful conditions of the housing of that part of the city. Seven areas were condemned in 1004, and nothing whatever has been done to remedy them Why not? Because no voice with special power could reach the centre Whose voice do we want to sound that view? The voice of the

working women, those who are most concerned.

Then take infant mortality. It is well known now and accepted that 100,000 little chiluren, of whom 50, ocxj could be saved, die in the year of their birth. When Lord Haldane was in power he entrusted me, under an Act of Parliament, with the chairmanship of a great charity, a royal charity, a great ancient foundation, which was restored to its original use of saving the infant life of this great city. As l looked round the table I found to my horror that we were all bachelors, although the' feeding of babies was the concern of the charity. What did we do. We called in the most experienced woman we could find ro do the job for us.

There a third question of safeguarding and saving young girls from a bad life.

Then comes the tremendous question of education. The working classes of thi> country arc determined to have a better education for their children, and why should the mothers not have a voice in it ? Kxchange.