Page:Women Wanted.djvu/402

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WOMEN WANTED

is very difficult and very expensive and very offensive to the clergy when it has been actually accomplished.

The Lady Francis Balfour is speaking. To the Bishop of Birmingham she is saying: "Let me take a concrete case. You may have a woman who is a Christian and you may have her husband ill using her in some sort of way. We have had evidence put before us, which is of course known to us all, that there are even men who live on the prostitution of their wives. Now, is that not a contract which has been broken on the one side in the worst possible way? Are they twain one flesh? Is that for better and for worse?"

Bishop of Birmingham: "Yes, I am afraid so."

Lady Francis Balfour: "And is that wife to stick to that husband, she being a Christian, and to do as he commands her?"

Bishop of Birmingham: "Yes, I am afraid so."

WHAT WOULD MEN HAVE DONE?

That's all, gentlemen. You and I will go. There will be other witnesses and days of testimony. But isn't this enough? What would you yourselves do if your church and your state handed you over body and soul, like this, to any other human being to have and to hold and to exercise this power and dominion over you? I don't believe you'd ever stop at all to parade and respectfully to petition about it. I think you'd be mobbing and rioting and bombing right away. And if they had arrested you and put