THE INTER-ALLIED CONFERENCE IN PARIS.

White Ribbon, Volume 25, Issue 289, 18 July 1919, Page 10

THE INTER-ALLIED CONFERENCE IN PARIS.

On February 10th the Inter Allied Suffrage Conference met in Paris, and it closed on April 10th, after the dele gation, side by side with the repre-

sentatives of the International Council, hrd been received by the Commission of the League of Nations, prc sided over by President Wilson. On April 10th, at 8 p.tn., the deputation was received. On their entrance. President Wilson shook hands with each of the delegates. 1 ads Aberdeen, Preddem of the In rernational Council of Women, thanked the members of the Commission for receiving the deputation, and said: “The International Council of Wo men has been ahead of you, created to <arry out for women this unffy of thought and action which aims at the well-being of humanity; it represent 1 22 federated national councils, which in their turn are federations of wo men's societies, working in eat h country for progress, and including about jo million women. Can we not then be considered pioneers of the League of Nations?"

Mme. Suzanne Grinberg, advocate (France), pleaded the cause of Otien tal women: “Since a new world is to arise from the war, it should be a better world. Hut an improvement in human life cannot be realised it women lcmain in future in the c«»ndi tions which centuries of error and tradition have made for them. I am not here to plead our cause—the cause of Western women. Our civilisation is happily sufficiently advanced, although we are treated as interims from the civil and political point of view, for us to have, both according to law and custom the free right to the disposal of our persons.

It is not so everywhere in the world. There are countries in which written laws claim that the wife and child of a man who is unable to pay a debt may be taken as pledge* b\ the creditor.

There aic countries where patexna authority is so great that mothers can sell or hire their daughters children of i j or 13 years— -or bind them by legal contracts for sums varying from 500 to 1000 franc s, to make slaves of them or inmates of bad houses. There a/r laws to which millions are subject and which are all the more rigorous for having a religious eharacter, which prescribe that the father,

muster of his daughtei, can many her without her consent. In a gieal Asiatic country where marriage is obligators and where the law gives a regular character to polygamy, tin future wife is never consulted as to the < lum e oi a husband.

There are countries where the law of man, the stronger, is exercised in all its horror, where the husband lias the light to inflict upon his wife the severest corporal punishment; where lie has tlw right to repudiate her, consequently to separate her for ever from her children for futile motives—where the law gives the man always the guardianship of the children in case of divorce, even when he is the guiltyparty. Gentlemen, are you n"t indignant at such facts, of which 1 can only give \ou. alas, a faint idea, for lack of time? After having established tin- first principle of human justice-, that the peoples have a right to free* seif-deter mination, do you feel the- higher duty artinning that every human being, man and woman, has the right to choose freely his own destiny. It is true that v\c have received no mandate to plead this cause by those whom it concerns. There is some-

thing more: imperious that imposes on us tlu- obligation to speak of these

miseries and horrors: it is the duly < 1 every human being who knows flics* injustice;, and iniquities, to denounce (hem, in order to have them righted. In tin- interests of humanity, there fore, we remind you of these barbarous laws.

We think it would be a great claim t<» honour for the League of Nations onK to admit nations who undertake to give tlu* women of their coun’ry new and better conditions. We think, too, that it would dishonour this great League if it did not proclaim before all tin* right of human beings to live in their country free and respected.” Madame Avril Do St. Croix spoke on the State Regulation of Vice. “My task, gentlemen, is to present the case not of women living under an inferior civilisation, and of primitive mentality. They belong, on tin* con trary, to nations which have attained a high degree of civilisation, nations on whom they an 1 an indelible blot bv reason of the position in which titr-

ate placed By a mistaken conception of the role of the State in the dominion of public order, of morals and hygiene,

these nations have, through the buu Regulation oi prostitution, put uut ty.

As President of the Inlernaliotiji Commission ioi the Repression ot ih<. Traffic in Women, which the Iniv, national Council of Women has cn trusted to me for the last 20 years, 1 have the sad task of explaining to yot to-day this agonising problem, wlio* gravity and complexity we realist. Like you, we are interested in hygi

ene; like you, we are anxious lor pup lie order and morality, and it is jubccausc we are interested in the* V< •'tions to a high degree that m wish lor the disappearance of an institution from all countries where 1

.-’ill exists, which, by giving men a fictitious security in vice, is most dt grading to women’s dignity. Gentlemen, order is not promoted by disorder, nor morality by immorality, noi public health by practices which .ire a defiance of hygiene. Society i; degraded by people whose degradation it permits; nay, more-, whose degradation it sanctions.

In the hour when the future is bo ing prepared, when, after the ycai> of suffering we have gone through, side the law the unfortunates whom misery had already put outside so< itthe world is lieing rebuilt, we mu' find something else to save humanity from disease, disorder and immorality, than the official slavery' of prostitution for the most unfortunate of women. Liu; prison of the tolerated house imi>i djsap|>ear, and its procuress, the -hameiul traffic in women.

We suffer in having to raise the veil :hat hides this terrible social sore. Bui we should have failed in our dut\ if we had not demanded the inclusion in the principle’s of the’ League of Nations of absolute respect for the dig nitv of womanhood, and consequently ♦he disappearance of institutions or laws which are the laM link in the chain which binds women to ancient slaverv.

W o know that it is not in your pown to intervene directly in these questions which are questions of internal order. W e do not ask you to do s > But we expect, from your high sentiment of justice and human dignity, your moral support for the triumph of the principles we represent here." Mine. l)e Witt Schlumberger urg'd strongly that the principle of woman suffrage be proclaimed by the League of Nations in a spirit of peace and justice without waiting for the necessity of revolutions.

Miss Fry said: “Wc know that even it >uu wish, you cannot dictate laws to rath country, but we hope that before u>u separate, you will give the weight of your sanction to the principle of equal suffrage. We go further. Kverywhere where the people are b> the League of Nations to dispose free ly of themselves by referendum, we resfwtfully claim for women the right to take part in this plebiscite. The iii>t elements of patriotism and libel tv will lx- taught by the women to the children of all nations; enable them, gentlemen, to speak as citizens shar ing these benefits, and not as helots t whom thev are refused.”

Mint’. Schiavoni (Italy) and Mrs I nn Andrews (United States) present .(I the following:—

li) That an international commission oi a permanent international burr.iu of education should be provided lor and included in the Peace Treaty. ':) That women whose role is every day more active in the educational N|)heie should Ik* called to sit on this commission or bureau on the same terms as men. LABOUR RESOLUTIONS I lie following were presented to the International Laboui Commission of tht Peace Conference:— (i) That all protective Labour leg idation shall be established on a basi of absolute equality for all adult woikers without an\ distinction of sex. (:) That no prohibition applying to the whole of industry should be allowed, but that all restrictive measures should only deal with one specified operation.

(.;) That these prohibitions should be strictly limited after consultation with commissions of women, composed of delegates of the women’s trade unions concerned- women factory intors, socialists in physiology and h'gione, medical women, or others having some special qualification to deal with the question.

(4) That these commissions before living their decision should try to ♦ind out whether the unsuitability of ""inen docs not really depend on e*

healthy operations or conditions which should lx* modified in the interests ec|u.ill\ of nun as of women workers. (5) That technical education should he accessible to all, and organised on •> basis of equality between the sexes. (6) That the protection of motherhood should be instituted on the same

grounds as the protection of childhood.

(7) That it should be recognised that the State should, without any distinction whatever, allot to each expectant or nursing mother a payment sufficient for maintenance in compensation for wages lost during the' period >hc is forbidden to work.