The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-17

have lost nothing of s that freshness, that enthusiasm, that half childish. wholly splendid zest of Lifer' Isn't that a pretty defense of the American woman?
 With characteristic fearlessness Miss Bates declares that the American wom- an makes aa good wife and a good mother when she puts her mind to 1t. This" as she quaintly expresses 1t. i ''is the most wonderful work in the world for a Womans Just now she is exulting in this discovery of the other jobs. For the moment she may lay aside the domestic life but this is just the natural reaction. The pendulum of her life has swung far out toward free oom and away from domesticity--awa from the narrow Victorian age, but it will be adjusted before long"
 And right here let me say this: that you cannot with horses, with force. with argument, with reason or with wide open starring fact, get the Amer ican woman away from her one essen- tial prerogative-the feminine charac- teristic of mesticity-altogether And by "domesticity' I do not nec- essarily mean--HOME. Far from it.
 Domesticity can mean almost any thing in its broadest sense-the un- sentimental, unromantic sense of HABIT
 man can get into a habit and go on suffering in it until it finally be- comes his actual necessity and con- tentment
 A woman will see her gods tumble all about her on every side-her house, etaphorically-burn to the ground and she will sit in the dead white ashes of it and cry out and demand i hn Inc ho l.. Il or been left behind in disaster or in the natural changes of the progress of living.
 Why is it?
 Merely because it is a HABIT. and the American woman's habit is her love of her husband and her home and her chfldren-the right kind of Amer ican woman, I mean. To go back to Miss Bates and her theories, l must say l like her atti- tude about the American woman and marriage.
 Miss Bates says that the average American woman has very fine and lofty idea about the marital state and then she hits stright from the should CT.
 European critics" says the actress, have called the American woman un- reasonable in her attitude toward her husband. She is told that she is too strict with him and that she should look aside from his follies instead ol dragging him into the Divorce Courts If this criticism be true, then our whole system of American morals is wrong. As nation, we have adopted the ideal Of moral decency. Our women are living up to this ideal'
 While the evils of diVOrpas arc tbicl< as the sands on the seashore and the privilege of this "only way" are abused world without end and the right kind of woman hates the Divorce Courts like game bird hates a red dog, yet when she is forced into such things she does 1t with the dignity and decency for which she is famed from one end of the earth to the other
 The American woman says to her husband:
 After you've promised faith to me at the Marriage altar, keep your word, as Ishall keep mine. If you break it. you make void our only contract, and We can throw 1t away. l have q life that I may live without you"
 And while she loathes and despises to have to be brought info the lime light and go through life branded as "divorcee," still she protects, instead of deserting her home in the doing.
 In summing up the matter, Miss Bates compares the American women to her European sister:
 The European woman gives EVERY THING and gets NOTHING when she marries. The American woman gives EVERYTHING and requires EVERY THING in return and why shouldn't she? She KNOWS her worth"
 
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