Once more I beg of you to remember your power. If only your motto could be to unite the world, send no thought which would not bless or cheer, purify or heal—then we should, as the soldiers say, “get on with the peace.”
V[E]
“I fear bombs in politics far less than I do apathy.”
I AM here as a sort of dual personality. When I speak to the League of Women Voters, I am speaking as a woman interested in women the whole world over. When I am asked to speak as a Member of Parliament to men and women, then I must speak with the full responsibility of a Member of Parliament, from the most up-to-date and glorious constituency in England, namely, Plymouth.
It takes a good deal of prayer to keep me humble. To be born in Virginia and to represent Plymouth, is enough to turn a stronger head than mine. The Good Book tells us to love all men, also the greater the loving the greater the life. I am fortunate in loving two great countries, but their greatness will be tested by their attitude to lesser countries. To-day I am speaking as a woman and not as a Member of Parliament. The League of Women Voters, I realise, is not the only political league of women in America, but it has the merit of being non-party. I, as an outsider, could not come over and speak here as a party politician, but I come as a woman, speaking to non-party women, interested in something bigger than any party.
When entering Parliament nearly two years ago, I went as a party candidate, a Coalition Unionist. The Coalition was a combination of Unionists and Liberals and Labour, who wanted to coöperate and felt that Lloyd George was the best man to win the Peace, as he had done more than any single statesman to win the war. When I got into the House of Commons I realised that as for certain problems, such as moral questions which are of vital interest to women, no political party cared sufficiently or realised how much women cared. As a result, Liberal and Unionist and Labour men often put such questions in their programme, but more often they sat down when the time came to stand up and fight for them.
It is my honest and convinced belief that there are some questions vital and international, which women see with a more unclouded vision than men, questions which only women will fight for. That is why I am so keen about helping women voters, not only in England and America, but in all countries. There are things bigger than parties, even bigger than countries, though neither party nor country likes to think that anything is bigger than itself.
If only we, the new-comers of political life, can keep that greater vision of bigger things before us, then the world will become more the sort of place one dreams of and less the kind of nightmare one dreams in.