Cylchgronau Cymru

A COMMONPLACE CORRECTION. 467 B Commonplace Correction. I HAVE read and re-read an article in the February number of this Journal by Mrs. Wynford Philipps, on " The Problem of the Nineteenth Century/' and I frankly confess that the only problem I can find is to discover her meaning. Many of the phrases and paragraphs I have heard from Mrs. Philipps on a public plat¬ form, and even then, aided by her tone and gesture, I could not catch the meaning. What are " political Mormons," and what can be meant by " dewomanising influences " ? How does a housewife " regulate her husband judiciously." However, I will " dumb my ears," to borrow one of Mrs. Philipps' phrases, to the flow of argument which I cannot follow, and confine myself to a couple of paragraphs which, in spite of some ambiguity of expression, are misleading. Mrs. Philipps says : " Woman's Suffrage is the burning question in the Women's Liberal Federa¬ tion at the present moment—when it was founded it was fondly hoped by many . men and some women that it would limit itself to helping the Liberal political parly, and not trouble about Liberal principles that were not included in the party programme—but it was soon seen that even women could not be banded together to teach Liberalism, and the truths of the great reformers such as this, that ' capable citizenship is a title to political enfranchisement,' that those who are not enfranchised suffer as it were ' a brand of electoral disability,' without also learning the lesson and applying it to their own womanhood. " In the first year of the Federation only thirty-two votes were recorded in favour of Woman's Suffrage, but at its fourth Council meeting an almost unanimous vote in favour of the principle of Woman's Suffrage was carried, and last year the Woman's Suffrage party obtained two hundred votes (out of about four hundred and sixty-five) in favour of pressing the question actively forward. The Woman's Suffrage party is bound to win in the Federation, because it is teaching the truth that women are everywhere learning, that if their mission be to work, and to work well, to obtain education and the best instruments for the work they undertake is an essential part of their mission." On the contrary, the burning question in the Women's Liberal Federation at the present moment is how to win the General Election. I know there are some members who are without the sense of relative importance and who will work for a particular reform in season and out of season, but the vast