The Washington times., 1921-10-09

Sc" he new woman! iseehh W
remember first hearing
that phrase twenty years
ago when I was a schoolboy and
went a-cycling with my parents In
Battersea Park. Eheu Fugaces!
Other schooiboys. doubtless, heard
similar phrases in ancient Corinth
and ancient Girgent and ancient
Sparta. But always the phrase was
merest phrase. For woman was
then. and is still. the one unchang-
ing.
New Civilization, new empires,
new religions rise and perish-but
woman survives. immutable. She,
the child-bearer, the mother and the
mate, does not alter. Scarcely even
does she develop.
From you in the teeming cities,
this truth is perhaps hidden. You
are amazed with so great a multi
tude of women that you take the
outward semblance-the frocks and
the furbelows, the forensic achieve
ment or the scientific-for the es-
sence. for the inward soul.
But to any true thinker. any
true psychologist, any true intel
lectual. who will withdraw himself
awhile from your teeming cities.
the modern mystery Of the new
woman" will be instantly and album
dainty made plain; he will know
that she Is a mere Pigment. a muck
rake Aunt Sally erected by cheap
brains to be SHE'D at with pseudo
sociological cocoanuts.
IMMUTABLE WOMAN.
Great truths are inevitably sim
pie; and the simple truth about
woman. the one star-splendid fact, is
her immutability. In triumph as in
disaster, she remains invincibly her.
self.
Let me not be thought either pre-
sumptuous or an egotist. II en-
deavor to illustrate the star-splendid
fact by referring to my own literary
labors. At the moment, in a quiet
village Of Ruthlandshire. I am alb
sorbed with two literary heroines.
The first Of these. she Of a story I
conceived some five years since, and
Of whom I am now concluding the
epilogue. is a woman OF postwar
time Engiand-a woman who, de-
spite all distastes. remained immut-
ably and triumphantly her cour-
ageous self. My second heroine is a
free woman Of the Hellenes who
lived and loved and died more than
two and twenty centuries ago.
Arete the Golden. my second hero
Inc, is not of my own conception.
My friend and illustrious colleague,
Mr.. Douglas Sladen-who is collabo-
rating with me in the long overdue
task Of rendering to free Doric
Greece that homage which our his
torians. blinded by the harem-cul-
ture Of Athens. have hitherto denied
to hsr-discovered the tale Of Arete,
written down as we think from
hearsay. in an Alexandrine manu-
script. He 1t was who dug out the
dry bones of a long-dead woman;
mine Is to be the honor of recloth-
ing those dry bones in the flesh of
the living word.
UNCHANGED IN CENTURIES.
But even those dry bones my col
league discovered show the marvel
and the lesson which are my only
excuses for approaching this prob
lem Of 1.-The new woman" from the
literary egoist's angle. Because the
marvellous lesson-as I see it's
just this:
That the heroine of my first tale,
my Aliette Bruton, whom Ia mod
ern Of moderns-conceived out of
my own experience five short years
ago. differs in scarcely one psyche
logical essential from Arete the
Golden, whose sea-blue eyes gazed
down upon the sea-blue harbor of
ancient Syracuse 800 years before
the birth Of Christ, and whose leg
endary character, preserved for at
least seventeen centuries in Alexan-
drine hologyaph. comes down to US
clear-cut as Tanagra, and as I'M
changingly woman.
This is no literary juggle! All the
material garnitures OF these two
tales, all the religion, all the philos-
ophy. all the words and all the
weapons Of them, differ by two-and-
twenty centuries; yet the heroines
around whose adventures the tales
revolve hardly differ at all. The vir-
tues of Arete are the virAues of
Aliette: the weaknesses Of Ailette
the weaknesses Of Arete. Each, In
disaster as in triumph, remains i'm
mutually the woman-woman eter-
nal. Coelum non amman mutant!
,Nyrxv vVONgAN CxIuNERA