The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    further than she has already done into the turbid and muddy waters of party politics. And even if she cheerfully added this to her other burdens, I do not believe that it is desirable for the State. As I grow older, I become more and more conscious that the primary need of the State is stability; not stagnation, that is ruinous, but sta- bility through change. At the present moment the stability of the State is in serious danger. The party system, which has worked with some prac- tical success for two hundred years, seems to be on the verge of breaking down, and the British Constitution, whose main features have endured for five centuries, is in the melting-pot. I should be reluctant to add to existing dangers such a leap in the dark as would be involved in the addition to the register of a mass of untried voters, If the vote should be given on ordinary party lines, it would be comparatively inefficacious. If, as is possible, it resulted in the formation of a new Par- liamentary group, it would add to those political complications which are already puzzling enough. I am fully aware that I shall be denounced as prejudiced and old-fashioned, and that I shall be assured that any possible dangers arise from the artificial characteristics imposed upon women by unjust restrictions, and that these dangers will disappear with the advance of political training and experience. I would merely urge, in reply, that almost any line drawn between male and female activity will fail to satisfy everybody, and