The Washington times., 1922-06-19

Twelve Greatest Women.
Women Lack Choice.
Pictures Of a Prince.
Women on Farms. q.
BY ARTHUR BRISBANE
(CopyriRht. ls11N

Copyright. Is22)
Ladies of the League of
Women Voters want a list of
the twelve greatest women in
America, but say they cannot
make the list-and 'they can't,
indeed. No one today could
name even one of them.
Three hundred and fifty-seven
years before Christ, the bad
tempered, wild, murderous
daughter of King Neoptolemus
was making miserable the life
Of Philip, her new husband.
She danced naked, with snakes
wrapped around her. Neverthe-
less, she was the greatest woman
of that period, for she bore
Alexander the Great.
Who, in 1908, seeing a tall,
gaunt young woman going in
and out of a windowless hut
in Harden county, Kentucky,
looking about for bears and
Indians, keeping house on a
dirt floor, would have chosen
her, for we'll she was the
worlds greatest woman of that
time. In that hut, one year
later, she bore Abraham Lin
coin.
Ye shall know them by their
fruits. That applies to women
as to fruit trees. A man Is
judged by the work he does; a
woman by the children she Gre
ates. The curious thing is that
women are not satisfied with
that judgment. They admit
that Phidias was greater than
his greatest statue, but do not
realize that Phidias' mother
was greater than he. The Gre
ator is greater than the thing
created.
There is one unjust thing about
women's work. Man selects his
material for work. Woman de-
pends for results partly on the
sort of man she marries, and is
not always allowed to choose.
That is a handicap that should be
adjusted in some way. 1t will
be adjusted in the end by women
making the average man good
enough. Once woman had to pick
and choose among cannibals.
Now, usually, the worst choice
she makes is a nonentity.
Women that deny fundamental
differences between men and
women should consider the Vas
sar baseball game, with college
girls playing against their
fathers. The fathers won.
Could anybody imagine the moth
ers of college boys beating their
sons at baseball? The idea is
ridiculous. The power Of woman
goes first into creating the hu-
man race and then civilizing it.
That ought to be a job big enough
to satisfy even, ambitious woman.
Fliers risked their lives taking
TO London the earliest photo
graphs of the Prince of Wales in
Egypt. How foolish, we say, to
risk life for pictures of youth
that never did anything except
come into the world in fortunate
fashion.
Then we recollect that our
fliers risked their lives carrying
first photographs Of the Dempsey
prize fight, and our democratic
scorn Gains down. Alteration of
n reigning nonentity is at least
more respectable than alteration
Of q prize fighter.
Flammarion, French astrono-
mer, aged eighty, says he can
prove that the soul exists; that
man has two bodies, spiritual and
physical. But the usual human
being says, THANK you, l need
no proof" We feel about the
soul as Samuel johnson felt
when freedom of the will was
discussed: "Sir, we know that the
will is free, and that's an end Of
It," r.
J Human beings know, from
within, that the soul exists, and
that's an end Of that. Let any
h DIV in doubt read Wordsworth's
poem on immortality. He will
know that the spirit within
cometh from afar.
Once statistics told you that Of
inmates in our insane asylums,
the largest class was made OF
farmers wives. On lonely farms,
alone all day, nothing interesting
IN sight, monotonous fields
stretching in all directions, no
cornpanionship-cooking, wash
ing, mending for many-women
found relief In insanity.
Some would have said, at is
A. ,~;,nal 'curua 0n wonep0 "