STACK iceo 01 Revising Morals and Laws A LECTURE DELIVERED BY LADY COOK (NEE TENNESSEE CLAFLIN). LONDON : CHRISTY, & LILLY, LTD., 113-117, FARRINGDON ROAD, E.C THE apogee of Lady Cook dates from May 6th, 1910, when } at the Royal Albert Hall, she delivered the lecture, the principal portions of which are here printed, from the shorthand writer's notes, for the first time. In the previous December this pioneer of the Women's Cause had addressed a mass- meeting organised by the Suffragettes in the same building. There were several other speakers on that occasion, but May 6th was Lady Cook's own day. It was held to be impossible that one solitary woman, no matter who she m'ight be, would be able to attract an audience of upwards of 7,000, to the vast building erected forty years ago as a memorial of Queen Victoria's beloved Consort, Prince Albert. A gloom was hanging over London, for, as the day wore on, the reports of King Edward's critical condition had caused a widespread feeling of dismay. Thousands of loyal subjects were streaming into the Hall, when, between 7 and 8 o'clock, the news from Buckingham Palace became more alarming. By that time it was too late to announce a postponement of the lecture, to hear which many had come from the outlying districts of the Metropolis. In the preliminary passages of her address Lady Cook made some infinitely touching references to the blow which was to fall upon the Empire before the day was over, and her pathetic words were received with the deepest sympathy and heartfelt grief. At the close of the lecture the National Anthem was sung, and the vast assemblage left the Hall hoping against hope, and learning of the dire calamity only on the following morning. Many wondrous scenes have been witnessed in the Albert Hall since its formal inauguration by the Queen of blessed memory early in 1871. Some of the greatest artists of the last century have charmed us within its walls. There have been vast political gatherings, Masonic festivals, and charitable fetes of every description ; but the picture which this magnificent temple of the Arts and Sciences presented to the spectator's gaze on this May evening was unique. THE NEED OF REVISING MORALS AND LAWS A LECTURE DELIVERED BY LADY COOK (NE'E TENNESSEE CLAFLIN) AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON, ON MAY 6, 1910 UPWARDS of 7,000 people assembled in the Royal Albert Hall on the evening of May 6th, 1910, to hear Lady Cook (nee Tennessee Claflin) lecture on " The Need of Revising Morals and Laws." The Rev. Hugh Chapman, Chaplain of the Chapel Royal, Savoy, presided, and, after a brief address, introduced Lady Cook to the audience. LADY COOK, who was received with loud applause, began by quoting the words : " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? And if any man defile the temple of God him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." Lady Cook continued : When our blessed Lord spoke to His disciples and to the multitude He spoke in parables. When He told them the parable of the sowing of the seed, He said : " Some fell by the wayside ; some fell on stony ground and then withered away ; some fell among thorns and thistles and was choked, while some fell on good ground and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Then He gave unto His disciples another parable, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man which sowed seed in his field, but while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. And when the multitude had gone away, His disciples said to Him, ' Master, tell us what you mean by the parable of the tares and the wheat. ' He answered, ' He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. ' ' : I am going to give you a lecture to-night in regard to the purity of the sexes, with special reference to our duty to our children and future generations, and I shall talk plainly to you, and not in parables. It was said not very long ago by Lombroso, the great criminologist, that all women were born liars, yet I ha-ve not heard of anyone chal- lenging that amazing statement, or of any duels being fought. Per- haps he was right. The environment of women and their teaching for thousands of years concerning the most sacred duty of motherhood leads them to tell a falsehood, which proves that he is correct. A little child comes running up to its mother and asks : " Mother, who made me?" The mother's past teaching that she was born in sin and brought forth in iniquity, and that to have procreated and brought forth a child was a deadly sin, makes her seek some subterfuge : " I found you under a gooseberry bush," or some other lie, such as " The doctor brought you." The child, looking into the mother's face, knows that she is telling an untruth. When the child's character is forming for good or evil, instead of hearing the truth from a good mother, he goes into the streets among his little companions, where it is told to him in a very different manner to that in which it should be imparted by the mother. But let us. look at the other side. A child comes up to its mother and says : " Mother, who made me ? " " Who made you, darling ? Your parents are responsible for your life. Your mother carried you under her heart for many months and went through the agony of death to bring you into the world. Now, you see, my darling, why mother loves you so, and why she would give her life to save yours. And for many weary days and nights I have watched over you to bring you to your present -age. Now you see why I am called ' mother, ' for ' mother ' means trouble, and you have cost me much." Do you suppose that any child, after hearing that from a pure, intelligent mother, could ever do anything to bring the blush of shame to her face? Do you think he could ever go into the street and insult or debauch any other mother's daughter? Never, for his character is at once formed, and from that moment he learns to respect his mother, and in doing so he respects every mother's daughter. (Applause.) I am a little perturbed to-night, because I had prepared a special lecture for you; but on learning that our beloved King is now, per- haps, in the death struggle, it has grieved me very much, and I am sure everyone in this great hall to-night shares that feeling at this inoment. But I hope you will bear with me in what I have got to say, because I want to say it. You deserve it ; you want it ; you need it. (Applause.) Now let me ask what has been the cause of women being made liars. What has been taught to them ? Not by our blessed Saviour, the best friend that women ever had, for He said : " Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Then again : " Know ye not that the kingdom of heaven is within you ? " There He reminds you that little children should be a bless- ing, but very few seem to realise it. If they did they would not live the reckless and debauched lives they do ; they would not go into the streets and fill them with the results of their depravity and licentiousness. What has caused women to be so trammelled that they are like slaves? The following choice sentiments are taken from a French priest's manual, the " Directorium Sacerdotale," which is described as "A Guide for Priests in their Public and Private Life," by Father F. B. Valery, S.J. It is the fifth edition, and was published in Dublin in 1898 as "thoroughly revised." I do not like to quote this, but I must tell you why women have been treated like slaves and worse than beasts during the last few centuries. On page 68, under the heading of "Dangerous Connections," one reads : What is woman? St. Jerome gives the answer: "She is the gate by which the devil enters, the road that leads to sin ; she is what the sting of the scorpion is." And in another place he says : ""Woman is a fire, man the tow, and the devil the bellows." St. Maximus writes of a woman: "She makes shipwreck of men, she is a tyrant who leads them captive, a lioness who holds them fast in her embraces, a siren decked out to lead them to destruction, a malicious, evil beast." And St. Anastasius the Sinaite says : "She is a viper clothed with a shining skin, a comfort to the demon, a laboratory of devils, a flaming furnace, a javelin wherewith the heart is pierced, a storm by which houses are overthrown, a guide leading to dark- ness, a teacher of all evil, an unbridled tongue, speaking evil of the saints." And St. Bonaventure writes: "A fair woman tricked out with her finery is a keen and sharp-edged sword in the hands of the devil " During the height of the power of the Inquisition the victims were generally witches, though these women were really discoverers in the sphere of physical science. The Archbishop of Treves avenged the Church for the bad weather of the spring of 1586 by burning nearly 200 women as witches. And the Inquisitors boasted at the end of the I5oth year of their existence that they had burned 30,000 women for witchcraft. How can you expect much from women in the face of such treatment? It has even been said that to have children under any circumstances was an awful sin. and that woman was an instru- ment of Satan; and a Galician Bishop declared that she was not human. At the Council of Macon the Bishops debated whether she had a soul. How can you expect women under such circumstances, when such teaching has been going on for centuries, to be called any- thing else but a " band of liars " ? It was reported in a London even- ing newspaper only last week that a County Court Judge said : " When women go into the witness-box they will swear to anything up to the hilt." (" Shame.") If people believe this of us, we must be more than liars ; we must be culprits fit for prison. It is about time we called for our sons to give us back our good name. (Applause.) Do you realise what it is to be called a perjurer? Yet it was said by that Judge, only last week in London, that " she would swear to anything up to the hilt." (" Shame.") I say that is false. (Applause.) I am sure there is not a young man in this hall to-night but loves and worships his mother. If there is any man here who is so degraded and so degenerate as to forget the sufferings of his mother at his birth, and the way she watched over him and took care of him, even up to manhood, he must be a very bad man. But beyond all that, he must be a brute who can see his mother called not only a liar, but a perjurer. (Applause.) What are we women working for ? We are working for purity, for a better understanding between the sexes, and, generally, to bring about a better condition of things. (Applause.) We have our churches closed from week to week, and men and women have to walk the streets because they have nowhere else to go. They have no com- panions, and cannot find any except in the streets. Our beautiful young boys, coming from the big public schools and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, cannot get acquainted with girls without being introduced. If they do not go through this formality, the only people they come in contact with are the poor pariahs who have nothing to hope for, no matter what they might desire to do. What I want to do is to open the churches which are lying idle al! the week, and have rational and innocent amusements in them every night and every day. (Applause.) There they might have such things as "spelling bees," and possibly discussions about topics of the day. I do not say they should neglect history, but they might take up such frivolous things as the possible invasion of England. (Laughter.) They might discuss such a simple thing as another Mutiny that we are threatened with in India, or even the financial condition of England that we are now suffering from. (Renewed laughter.) Young men and young women have got to live in this country, and they have to live for years and years, and frequently they have to suffer owing to the circumstances which surround them. Would it not be better for these young people to meet in a pure and holy place and talk over things and get better acquainted? There a young man might get to know some beautiful young girl to whom he may offer marriage, and eventually she might become his wife. (Applause.) Yes, I am a matchmaker, and I believe in it. (Applause and laughter.) Thither they could go in all purity, and meet pure girls in the presence of matrons and the vicars and other friends. They could have delightful amusements, and you could bring these boys from the street, while the pure girls could also go there instead of staying at home, with nowhere to go, because their father is very much interested in taking care of some other man's daughter. Such girls have no liberty, and no one to look after them except their poor dear old mother, to whom the chivalry of men should go out. (Applause.) She has borne him his children, and worked hard, and we want to revive the old idea of chivalry in men. (Applause.) I am pleading and working earnestly so that we may get the clergy on our side. We do not want money. All I want you to do is to go home and use a little commonsense. There are plenty of institutions built already too many sucl> as our insane asylums and gaols, that are peopled with the off- spring of ignorant mothers, and of debased, debauched, and diseased fathers. (Hear, heai.) They are every one filled, but we have got to the limit. The women have got to act, and they can stop it in one or two decades by stopping the supply. (Applause.) They can do that by teaching true religion the religion of Christ. What is religion? Let us take it as it is, a word of very deep mean- ing. It is, as you all know, " religio " (which means " back-bind," re- straint, or repression). That is the meaning that the dictionary gives " restraint " and that is what we want to teach our young men to use restraint. (Applause.) It is false to say that prostitution is a necessary evil. Yet it is plainly said and believed in too; but. instead of being a necessary evil, it is an unnecessary curse, for it produces disease. It creates our degenerates, and it is the cause of over a million children dying every year before they reach the age of one with infantile 10 syphilis and other causes. We are all talking about having bigger families, yet many children never get beyond the age of youth. What is the reason of that ? Because we are not taught the responsibility of parenthood and how to take care of them. It is not quantity we want. We want quality. (Applause.) Then you would not have your streets and towns in the condition they are in at present, filled with degenerates and unemployed. You send a number of missionaries abroad every year. You had better send your missionaries down to those streets in your own towns where the people breed like flies and are herded like beasts, and are frequently in a starving condition. It was said the other day in a Sunday paper that of 1,800 labouring men who went to get work on the new Dreadnought, after they had been examined only two were found to be fit. In another paper the editor stated that a lady went into a school in the South of London, where she found 766 children. They were examined, and not one child was found to be sound. Yet we are ready to bring these children into the world without preparation on our part, and without their consent ; but in doing so we are only catering to depravity and licentiousness, which Christ Himself denounced. On the other hand, we are face to face with the fact that we have to pay about ^15,000,000 every year that our paupers and degenerates may be taken care of, and ^70,000,000 to keep up institutions for people that are not fit to procreate, not fit to bring their issue into the world. Yet they are, in many cases, not to blame, because in the first place they ought not to have been made. That is a very strong statement, but we must stop the supply, or we shall go down like other Empires, for you are not much better now than ancient Egypt, and even portions of India, and Rome itself. Many other Empires have fallen, and what has been the cause ? Their licentious- ness and their disrespect to women. When Rome began to disrespect women, Rome began to totter to her downfall. (Applause.) Many people are saying that we want more children, and others are talking of what is called "race suicide." The first say we must have more children, and that it is a good thing to have a large family. Well, that is a grand idea, but how does it work out when men go to look for employment ? How often do we see the warning : " Fathers of families need not apply " ? They must not look for certain positions if they have children, and often cannot rent a house or apartments to shelter their little ones without difficulty. It is a frequent occurrence, when taking houses or flats in good neighbourhoods, to find that 1 1 children and dogs are objected to. It is difficult to get any shelter for the little ones, the chief objection made being that children and dogs are not allowed. I remember an anecdote of an ex- President, who is against race suicide and in favour of large families. On one occasion, when travelling in , he wished to take rooms for his family, including a nurse and infant, but the landlord objected to the infant being brought on account of the other guests. " I will have these rooms," said . "Not with the infant," replied the landlord. "All right," said , " I will take an axe and chop off the infant's head, but I take these rooms all the same." An advertisement issued by the Kensington and Chelsea School District reads : Respectable married couple, to act as father and mother to about 34 boys. Candidates must be between 28 and 45 years of age. Preference will be given to candidates without children, or those whose children do not need to reside with them. Another advertisement runs : Candidates for the post of Schoolkeeper must be between 25 and 40 years of age, married, and with not more than one child, preference being given to a man without children. One writer, commenting on these advertisements, says : " Yet the L.C.C. issues these regrettable advertisements, in which men are bribed to deny themselves children the best happiness life can afford." In other words, they must not have any children if they want to get a place under the School Board. Other advertisements state that if applicants have any children they must put them out, or they cannot have the place. (Laughter.) I do not see, therefore, how we are encouraging large families. On the other hand, there are people who say we have more children than we can take proper care of. What I say is produce a proper number of children, take care of them, and bring them to old age. (Applause.) That is what is necessary. But we want something else. The philosopher said : " Man, know thyself." Yet what we know the least about is our own body. Lord Rosebery said the other day that we must have a healthy body in order to have a healthy mind. But you cannot expect people to have brains and be worthy to be called the children of God if their bodies are full of disease. We want women to do something to alter these things, because it is we women who suffer. It is we who suffer, and not so much the men. 12 When we mothers see that over a million girls die every four years, as one of the effects of unbridled lust, so that our young men may "sow their wild oats," and that old roues may run the gamut with many mistresses, and not only debauch themselves, but teach their sons to follow in their tracks then, I say, it is time that we rebelled. It is not necessary for a man to "sow his wild oats." Every man can be as continent and as pure as any woman. (Applause.) Some people say that the sexes must be kept separate. Did you ever hear that it was usual for some mothers to have all girls and others all boys? It is natural for boys and girls to grow up together, and to be taught together by their mothers. If some ruffian were to insult the sister of any man in this audience, the brother would throttle him, or he ought to do so. (Applause.) Well, why should he not expect some other man to throttle him for disgracing and deceiving his sister ? Teach purity, and make it of the first importance, and we shall have just as many pure men as we have pure girls to-day. There are doctors who encourage men in evil ways, and I have heard a simpering society lady say : " We think they make better hus- bands when they have sowed a few of their wild oats.'"' (Laughter.) When they sow a few wild oats, they get something that remains, and that they will transmit to the beautiful bride, the pure girl that has been recklessly thrown into his arms. She will bring forth his diseased children, and they will send her with sorrow and grey hairs to the grave, for it is true : " As ye sow, so shall ye reap ; and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Men can be continent, and many of them are. Any man in this audience to-night would welcome an opportunity of going into a church or some place of that kind to be a companion of pure girls and become acquainted with them. Perhaps he will become engaged to one of them for a year or two without even thinking of anything wrong, but he will look forward and say : " Some day that pure, good girl will be my wife, and we shall have children to bless us in our old age." Every such man in this audience will help me to bring in a law to stop this terrible " sowing of wild oats " by our young men, and put an end to doctors teaching them that that is what they need to keep them in good condition. (Applause.) I have read in history where women were with many men on board ship, in forts, and so on, for weeks and months at a time; yet they came out just as pure as when they went in. And why not? If a man respects his mother, you can appeal to his better nature, and he '3 will want purity. Men would prefer to have a dear little home and wife and children rather than walk the streets, getting drunk, and going home reckless, all their money spent and their health ruined. As I told you at the beginning of my lecture, Lombroso said that "women are born liars," but the blessed Bible says: "All men are liars." (Laughter and applause.) I think they are not only liars, but deceivers of the worst kind. A man goes to the altar with his bride to make her his wife, who will bear his children, and she pro- mises to "obey." I am not troubling so much about that word, because every good wife wants to obey. I know I did. It is not the word " obey " I object to, but to the man saying : " With all my worldly goods I thee endow," when he does not intend to endow her with a single penny. (Laughter.) He even has his name marked on the linen and the spoons, and if she happens to save a few pounds which she might use in case of illness, he can force her into Court, take her little savings from her, and spend them. Only a few months ago a case of the kind was brought before a magistrate. With some other women I tried to take the case up, but it was no use, and the magis- trate, with tears in his eyes, said to the woman : " I must make you give the money up to that drunken brute. It is his money. You have no right to even a little perquisite. You cannot have a penny of it, even though you saved it, and did not spend it on bonnets and such- like. You must give it to him." And she had to do so. We want to bring about a change in such a condition of affairs. A woman can- not call anything her own, and she is not encouraged to save. She must bear everything. It has been so even from the time of the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were there together, he insulted the Lord for giving him his companion. What did Adam say ? " It was not me ; it was she." (Laughter.) Yet they were together all the time. But what did the woman do when God asked her what she had done ? She stood up boldly and said : " I was tempted by the serpent and I did eat, but I gave Adam almost all of it." (Laughter.) Look at the different treatment which is meted out to people nowadays. Take the case of Daisy Lord, or any other dear little girl that has been led astray, who, in her agony, and with the stigma upon her, is deserted by the man who is the father of her child. In the end she kills the child, and what is the result? She is condemned to be hanged, or is sent to prison, while the man goes scot free. (Cries of " Shame.") That is not what the Lord did. He heard both Adam and Eve, and listened to their little stories, and then He took both of them to M the gate and kicked, or thrust, them both out. (Laughter.) And the man ought to be thrust out of all society as well as the woman. (Applause.) Then we should not have any pariahs walking the streets, and there would be no men " sowing their wild oats," and looking upon a woman as fit only to become his mistress. No, we will soon stop that when we get the vote. (Applause.) But there is a better simile than that. Let us see that what is taught to our children is nothing but the truth. There is a picture of it in nearly every church. It is that of the woman coming from the rib. Now, it may be that there is something in that rib. We do not know. Some of us do not like to be called "ribs." We object to it, but there may be something in it, after all. The Lord God did not take the woman from man's feet, to be trampled on ; nor from his hands, to show that she was his servant ; neither did He take her from his head, to indicate that she was to be ruled by him. No, He took her from the man's side, so that he could work side by side with her, and could go into the world and bring up their children side by side as colleagues. God made woman from man's rib over the heart, and I have always thought that the heart adhered to the rib, and that is what made woman all heart and man often very selfish. (Laughter and applause). We will go back to our blessed Saviour, who is the woman's friend and the saviour of woman. What was one of the things He did that caused Him to be taken before Pilate ? When He was standing looking at the disgrace of men and women, and reflecting upon their depravity, He saw the crowd bringing a woman to Him, and they said, " Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act." The Lord took in the situation; He asked for the man, then he said to the crowd, " He that is without sin let him cast the first stone." Then He turned to write on the sands of time, and turning to the woman again, said : " Where are thy accusers ? " They had all fled, because they were all guilty. But what was His verdict ? " Neither do I condemn thee, but go and sin no more." When Jesus gave that just pronouncement He knew that His days were numbered, and so they were,, for very soon He was dragged before Pilate and condemned to be crucified. The mob had preferred a criminal to the blessed Lord. Yet Pilate was a good man and tried hard not to give up Christ. He argues with them, and then his wife came to him and said : " Have nothing to do with this just man," but the howling mob was determined to crucify Him. Of course. Pilate wanted their votes at the next election te keep himself in power (laughter and applause> and so he sold his will to the mob. 15 And who betrayed Christ? Who denied Him? Who crucified Him? Men ! But who followed Him to Calvary, weeping and wail- ing ? W;:men ! And in the agony of death He turned to the women and said : "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and your children, for the day will come when it shall be said : Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck." How many millions of women since that prophetic utterance have prayed for the mountains to fall upon them, and the hills to cover them up? And what were His last words on the Cross? "Woman, behold thy son." And we are going to behold them, and not only that, we are going to teach them the true religion of Christ. We are going to make our boys as good and as pure as our girls. We are going to make them respect every. woman, and then we shall not be told that prostitution is a necessary evil. (Applause.) Now a word about our blessed Saviour. There is not a soul in this house but what loves that pure Man, that blessed Christ. Who was it that He appeared to first after the Resurrection? Mary Magdalene, because He knew she needed His sympathy and love. No wonder the women washed His feet with their tears and wiped them with the hair of their head. Many men have said : " We do not want to be under petticoat government." Why, you are under petticoat government from the very moment you are born, and your mother would never leave you until you are grey-haired. She would follow you to prison and give you her life. (Applause.) Do not be afraid of "petticoat" govern- ment. We do not want to take it from you. We only want to put some decent men into Parliament who will respect women because they have respected their mothers. We do not wish to go there ourselves. We will take care of our babies ; only we want to have as much to say- about our children and what we are going to do as the men have. (Applause.) Yet over a million children die every year before reaching the age of twelve months. They ought never to come into the world at all. We want to bring forth pure and healthy children, and then we shall not have to make war to kill off the mob of the unfit. If they only- killed off the unfit we would not mind, but when you have a war you take the flower of our flock. You take our best and healthiest children, while you leave the degenerates and the paupers to breed, and we have to pay the taxes for their keep. It is only the best men that are made to go to war in order that certain soldiers may become future generals, 1 6 and that the other people may get a little more land. You had better take care of what land you have got. You had better see what you are about to lose in India, with other nations looking on ready to take it. We are always neglecting India. We do not know the value of our great Indian Empire. The Continental Powers know the value of India. None of them are encroaching towards Canada or Australia. The activities of the three great Continental Powers may be seen on the boundaries of our Indian Empire France on the Eastern border, Russia on the North- West, and Germany near the Persian Gulf. Look at the condition you are in now. That is why we are trying to get you to hear us. You need your mothers. You need the women to give you advice how to carry on this Government, how to keep your possessions, and how to prevent millions of people from going to rack and ruin. What kind of people have you got about you? Take the after- dinner table talk. I should not care to be a man. It is the whispered word : " Yes you know she he keeps house he had that done for her you know he drinks like a fish." That is the kind of man there is about. They have not got pure hearts. They do not respect their wives or mothers, and yet we are compelled to go to them and ask them to do us justice ! We shall never get it at this rate, but we are going to do the next best thing, and that is to appeal to the people and to our sons who are growing up, and then we shall get on. This has been going on for years, and we are almost in another generation, but we shall win very soon, because there are thousands of men who know that their mothers are their best friends, and they want women to come into power. (Applause.) It is only blase men who want things to go on as they are. They are like hardened criminals. We feel very sorry for these men, but let them die out. We do not intend to have any more of them coming forward. We intend to bring our boys up to be pure young men who will respect women and children. (Applause.) It is said sometimes that women have no bravery. What a foolish saying ! Look at the Spartan women. It is said of the Spartan wives and mothers that they harnessed their sons and husbands for battle with every incitement to valour, and, binding their bucklers on their arms, were wont to say : " Return either with your shield or upon it." A mother preferred her child's death to his dishonour. When a foreign lady remarked tc Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, " The Spartan women alone rule the men," Gorgo replied : " The Spartan women alone bring forth men." Just in the same way mothers should prepare their daughters for the battle of life, and arm them against the enemies of womanly purity, preferring all things to dishonour. But they cannot do this unless they themselves are pure. The sons of Sparta were heroes because their mothers were patriotic heroines. We want still to be mothers, and to propagate the race, but we do not want to go on sapping the nation and bringing it to the verge of destruction and revolution like other nations. We are very near it now, and the only salvation for you is to get us women to help you and give you our advice. We must advise you boys and girls and husbands, and we are going to study politics and understand these things. Why ? Because we have the greatest part of the suffering to bear. It is we who have to go for many weary months bearing the child. It rests with us whether the child is marked for good or evil. It is the duty of the mother to understand herself during that critical time ; every doctor knows that. We ought not to have to go round and make ourselves thieves, and "go through" our husbands' pockets at night in order to get a 'bus fare. We ought not to be kept down without any money. It ought to be considered that the wife is his colleague, and in the same position as her husband. (Applause.) Look what Queen Boadicea did when Britain was invaded. She called all her subjects together and said : " Men and women, follow me to battle " ; and she attached scythes to her chariot and drove through the enemy, and mowed them down like grass. And who was greater and brought about better conditions than your Queen Bess ? She was the greatest diplomatist in the world. She brought in and looked after the Protestant religion, and all without shedding a drop of blood. We all admit that Queen Elizabeth was great, and she was a virgin Queen too. I was going on to say something as to what we want to have done in England, and what our duty is, but I cannot do it without bringing in the revered Queen Victoria. Now that her beloved son is passing away, I shall abridge what I had to say on that. I was going to ask for certain laws to be modified and certain things to be allowed, but we shall have to wait awhile now. I shall never speak again perhaps. I am too old and too feeble to continue this work, but if I have instilled a little commonsense and truth into the young women here, so that they can go and teach the children properly the beginning of life, I shall not have toiled in vain. (Applause.) I am glad to have this opportunity of talking to you once more. I want to say that the one thing I have been striving for during many years is purity. We want purity and knowledge instead of vice and ignorance. I want you to understand yourselves. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. - L'iv ht, thou canst plause.) If w, ht bring in th ence to- night >f years, and e given fifty ne little resul le great work ill have their got the u'omt winning. (App . ley will not s millions read; earnest. and "k say : " Wh woman who rves our ideal I have long A e died : "les also will bear n deter- mini) nent by whic ndantly as w< 1 rom his seat He has assernu nu IIUUHIUJ tu a. mm i and we know that on more than one occasion he not only spoke, but voted for such a measure as that indicated, and more recently he said in the House of Commons : We have been told that to encourage women to take an active part in politics is degrading to the sex. I should think myself grossly inconsistent and most ungrateful if I supported that argument in this House, for I have myself urged the women of this country to take a share in politics. Aft:r that, to come to the House and say I have asked these women to do that which degrades them appears to me to be most absurd and inconsistent. Well, then we have another great man who said that he would never give women the vote, but that women had to work out their own salvation. That is just what we have begun to do, and that is what 000 064 446 8 we are going to continue to do until we really reach the goal that we have been seeking. (Applause.) If our professors at Oxford and Cambridge, and in all our different public schools, will not teach the children what they ought to know, then we shall tell them that the women must go in and teach them. (Applause.) Our boys should be taught to refrain from secret practices, and not come out of school degraded little scamps. Their bodies are the temples of God, and if when a boy grows up to be a man he wants to ask any pure girl to be his wife, he should approach her with as pure a character as he expects his future wife to have. What we want to ensure is that when a young man comes and asks a mother for her daughter in marriage, the mother shall be able to say to him : " Have you as clean a record as you expect my daughter to have? If not, go and marry among the people you have been debauching and living with, sowing your wild oats. I would rather see my child dead than she should bring forth disease and corruption." That is what we want to teach. If any man wants to make some beautiful girl his wife he must lead as pure a life as he expects that girl to lead. If he does not, he cannot have her. Then mothers will not be so eager to get rid of their children, because, even if they do not get married, she will have brought them up in such a way that they will be able to take care of themselves. Every kind of labour is honourable, except that which we see in the streets, and women would rather do honourable work than be compelled to do that. In the blessed Bible we read : " I saw the tree of life planted by a pure river of water, and the leaves were for the healing of the nations." If you have a pure river of life you will bring forth children that will be for the healing of the nation. But I ask you to struggle. I ask you in all vicissitudes to maintain hope and resolution. I ask you to swear that you will win. I ask this of you not only because I know that unnumbered calamities and terrible degradations will be the penalty if you fail in this great ordeal, but also because I want you to relieve the fame of England from a black and irreparable disgrace. (Loud applause.) A vote of thanks having been accorded to the lecturer amidst gieat applause, Lady Cook, with pathetic simplicity, said : God bless women ! God bless mothers, that they may teach their children purity, that they may bring forth better boys to grow up and be blessings to their parents ! j% This Lecture was specially delivered to an KNGLISH audience. During 1911 a similar Lecture, on the Laws and Morals of the United. Staffs, will be givtn in Ame addressed to Messrs HAVMAK, CHRISTY, & LILLY, LTD., 113-117, Farringdon Road, K.C. 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