The case for admitting women to the degrees and membership of Cambridge University on equal terms with men cannot much longer be opposed. Public opinion is on our side; and since the House of Lords, as well as the Parliamentary representatives of the nation, have given the Un versity vote to qualified Cambridge and Oxford women, it is practically—certain that they would in the last resort compel Cambridge to take down maining sex barriers.
The struggle can hardly come to wuch a pass as this. The history of Cambridge for over fifty year: has been a proud record of barriers broken down by the very persons who, on a narrow view, stood to gain by their maintenance. The barrier of clericalism and religious tests went, and Cambridge Churchmen admitted their university men of all other beliefs. Racial barriers were destroyed, and Cambridge offered its liberalizing stores of knowledge to the students of East as well as West. The barriers of wealth have been weakened, though not yet quite destroyed. The ban of enforced celibacy has also gone. and when College Fellows were permitted to ma Cambridge, itself demolished its _age-long monastic scheme of life. The barrier which excluded women from admission to examinations for honours fell in 1881 before force Ted by such men as Henry Faweett and Henry Sidgwick. This year, or 1921 at latest, should be the date of disappearance for all the other stupid artificial obstacles which prevent women—and, still more, the nation a: a whole—from{ participating fully in what Cam-ridge has to giv Way ror Mex Osty?
This brings me to touch the flimsy argument that the education offered by Cambridge does not suit the peculiar abilities of women. If the persons who make this remark had said—which most of them never did—that the ill informed teaching and the segregated life of cie bygone fashionable boarding school did not suit young women, they would have shown some knowledge of the facts, Or, again. one might have agreed with them if they had complained in former days (as perhaps the: limitation of subje mea at Cambridge itself. But there is neither cogency nor sense in proposing that women students should deny themselves the magnificent advantages which Cambridge offers through its teachers, its library and its laboratories.
Nor is there more stuff or reality in the objection that too many University-educated women become teachers. Actually there are too few. Secondary girls' schools need more teachers from the Universi ties than they have at present; elementary schools are—understaffed in this as in other respects.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.