456 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



see that the Peace terms are framed in the same spirit as the 

 victory was won and the armistice signed. 



Women realise that in the reconstruction period which must 

 follow the war the country requires the Ship of State to be 

 steered by men and women representing and co-ordinating the 

 best, irrespective of the present lines of political cleavage, and 

 maintain that the problems of Peace demand a union of ideas, 

 imagination, and courage just as much as those of War. 



Women are not showing any alacrity to swarm into the 

 party hives, nor are they sipping the party honey with the 

 avidity which some of the wire-pullers might desire. Rather 

 do they show a disposition to hear the great questions of the 

 hour discussed on wide lines of patriotism, and demand that 

 those who have sacrificed so much should be secured against 

 the perpetuation of the evils and injustices of pre-war days, 

 and that the best conditions of work and of living should be 

 realised for all those who help to produce the wealth of the 

 State. Questions affecting the family as a unit, questions of 

 housing, health, and wages, should be dealt with, not on party 

 lines, nor in the interests of wire-pullers and place-hunters, but 

 by those who are humanitarian in principle and practical 

 citizens of a world-wide Empire, and have at heart the greatest 

 good of the greatest number from a national and imperial 

 point of view. 



Women desire to see representative Government purged of 

 the poison of party prejudice, and more actively giving voice 

 to the aspirations and hopes of a Democracy which realises 

 its freedom in the laws passed by a representative House of 

 Commons. 



While appreciating the benefits of an informed, educated, 

 and critical Opposition, women are beginning to see that an 

 obstinate, pig-headed party blocking machine, calling itself an 

 Opposition, is a travesty of representative Government, and 

 is, so far as practical results are concerned, a mere dog in the 

 manger. Women desire to see an Opposition drawn from all 

 sections of the House of Commons ; its members thinking, 

 reasoning, and voting on the great questions of the day as 

 intelligent representatives of a free people, and not as parts 

 of the tied machine of a party caucus. It is in this spirit that 

 the new women voters are shouldering their responsibilities, 

 and it augurs well for the country that such earnestness of 



