New Britain herald., 1915-09-01
News foY TheAter G0ers and Women Readers
and American Women
 Compared by Prof. Isaac Hourwich
<ial Expert Says Weaker Sex of His Country Are lore Comradely and Less Self Conscious Than
 Our Women.

tressas so had their grandmothers, and if seemed like an outrage against
 nature for women to walk about with ] chopped hair
 1 Another reason for women being refused university training, said Pro- f lessor Hourwich, was that it was the time of George Sand and free love, which was brought against the rad teal women, though as matter of fact free love in the true sense was 1 not prevalent.
 Real Circumstances
 "The real circumstances were that l the intellectual group was slowly get ting out of the clutches of the estab- I lished Church and marrying under a ] civil ceremony, which was not recog nized unless sanctified by the clergy. 1 Anywhere else it would have been i easy for a man and a woman under such conditions to live together in dignif1ed relationship without neighbors being aware of any irreg- ularily in their compliance with the Church laws. Not so in our coun- try. The, Russian, you know con- sists of body, soul and passport, and the Russian landlord may not take tenant without first sending his pass
  thorities. In the case of a married couple, therefore, the certificate of the Church would have to accompany the passport: otherwise the authori- ties would not sanction the wife bear ing her husbands name and an open scandal would ensue.
 Another. evil ascrbed to the en- try of women into the universities was the so-called fictitious marriage, prevalent at the time. The Rus sian women, unless married, is not allowed to leave her home without the consent of her parents and the authorities until she is of age. This was nearly always fraught with diffi- culties, and to these young girls, filled with a wild enthusiasm to con- tinue their work, the wait of a year or so seemed almost unbearable. So they married and in most cases sepa- rated immediately, never to meet again. The Russian law recognizes no divorce-and this led to many illegal unions, as in later life both the man and the women fell in love and entered into relations which could not obtain the sanction of the Church"
 Grants Women Gy1nnasiums.
 LII SplIe OL the government closing the doors of its universities to women, said the professor, the agitation for the education of women increased alarmingly, and the government met the demands half way by granting women "gymnasiums." These were on the lines of the high school here, which allowed the women to matricu- late from them, but gave no oppor- tunity of taking degrees for any pro- fession. This step accentuated the situation, instead of improving it, and ! in 1868 the women of the intellectual 1 classes began to cmigrate to Switzer ! land. which was just beginning to ] open her universities to women. 1 It was then found that all men of 1 revolutionary tendencies Cmustach- less and beardless villains they were called, for they were almost inVariable young) who found the country grow ! ing too hot to hold them went to Switzerland, where they knew vel 1 come awaited them from the young
 women of tendencies as radical as
 theirs, and the government found a
 revolutionary colony of no mean inn
 portance being formed which might
 one day prove a serious menace to the
 throne. The professor continued: 1
 "In 1872, therefore, the Czar issued
 an edict that it had been deemed ad-
 visable to establish school for
 learned midwives' in St. Petersburg,
 with a four years course. This was
 characteristic of the government in
 so far as 1t was not officially called
 medical school and also in not
 granting the five years course re-
 quired for the taking of a medical
 degree. However. in 1876 the pro-
 fessors decided to increase the period
 to the five years required.
 "One curious thing about this school
 was that it was officially a branch
 of the Medical Military Academy.
 Imagine a school for learned mid
 wives part of the military academy! "In 1877 the RussianTurlSish war
 broke out, and the first batch of
 women having graduated they all
 went to the battlefields as army sur
 geons, and those that had not finished
 their courses volunteered as nurses. The work done by them was so ex-
 cellent that they received special
 recognition by the government, and in , 1878 a university for women was opened in St. Petersburg. Tn 1905- ' '06 the doors of all the Russian uni versailles were opened to women, but , in 1907 they were closed to them , once again, the universities having been found to be hotbed for the :, ! revolutionary movement.
 , They have never been received , 1 since, but today there exist splendid , l colleges of a private character, which
 give no degree although the women , are always to take public examina- tions for the taking thereof"