Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1920 — LETTERS FROM OUR READERS [ARTICLE]

LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

The American Woman Measured by the Recent Cltlzenahip Teat. To the thoughtful observer who la willing -to pee things as they are, Insofar as that la possible, and who is uware of the fact that It is well to take the world us we find it und not be too greatly disappointed If it Is not as we think it should be. a <alin consideration of the disclosures of the leeaut electlor la both enlightening and profitable for any who would ut dors turn! the needs of humanity and hope In any way to help meet .hexe needs. The educational enfranchisement of women Is of comparatively recent date and In the last half century the mental attitude of the sex toward the world corresponds to the mental development of the individual as a youth. -Just finishing the elementary schools and the college he feels sure that he can completely change any phase of the -world’s work he may choose to enter; but. jrs practical application Is added to his fund of academic knowledge, he finds as the years pass that hla philosophies of life needed many readjustments if they would fit conditions as they really exist; and so woman in the past eentury has been passing through the stage of early youth, so far as education of the world is concerned, and the programs of the numerous clubs that have flourished in •the past decade are an expression of that high idealism characteristic of youth that has not yet had its moral wings tested. But the granting of the franchise has given the&e feminine Don Quixotes their first opportunity for a tilt at one of the windmills of reality, and how have their acts corresponded with their high-flown estimate of themselves? Let us see —Woman’s proud boast has been that the motherhood and childhood of humanity Is her deepest Interest, but by her vote she Bubscribed to the extermination of one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, Armenia. Ignorance of this world tragedy can not be made as an excuse, for their story has been told In every corner of this broad land. Women have proclaimed,' times without number, that it be she who would put an end "to war If she were but given the opportunity. When it came was their promise justified by realities? The greatest plan for peace ever devised was rejected by the country that gave it birth and In which women were the political equal of men. It is true that they were led to doubt its true purpose by selfinterested politicians, but had we been open minded and seriously In earnest we would not have been so easily misled. The majority of mothers} who had sons in the war registered their protest against war by helping to defeat the only plan that has so far been proposed to keep the sons of future mothers from sharing the same or a worse fate. What matter so her son was spared? Women in the churches have been the leaders In missionary study, but when millions of children have died of starvation because of the delayed economic co-operation with Europe, women voted for American isolation. Words of sypmathy have been frequent, hut they are cheap. So long as it is not our children it elicits but a passing thought. Another well-known boast of women has been that they would vote for the Individual rather than the party, but election returns showed women to be „ much more partisan than men and' much less willing to listen-to both sides of great public questions. Their boasted gratitude to the soldier for what h,e had sacrificed was not justified by'facts, as one of the finest of the state’s young men who served in the world war was defeated by an acknowledged defaulter for one of the state offices, this being but one of numerous illustrations that could be given. Competent women everywhere were defeated .by their own sex for partisan reasons. Therefore, In the face of the overwhelming evidence of ignorance, selfishness and partisanism, let us no longer boast of our superior morals, but in humility strive to learn of those who have had generations of experience and who have overcome the youthful delusion that they can “set the world on fire.” — A WOMAN VOTER.