Burmese Women to Cast Ballot The news that the proposed Burmese franchise according to the constitutional self-government soon to be accorded will be so drawn as to include some 200,000 women is distinctly nothing less than_ surprising. Considering the East's utter ignorance of democratic doctrines not only as to the mechanism of the ballot but also as to the most primary conception of the ideas involved, the placing of ballots in the hands of Asiatic natives is, at best, an experiment. To extend this to the degree of including native women is held by most, if not all, well-informed Orientalists actually dangerous. In the case in point, however, there is, of course, a sufficient reason.
The Swedish traveller and author, Jane Gernandt-Elaine, has been writing of the Burmese women in a way to explain not merely how the contemplated system of ''household suffrage" logically ought to include the women, but also how their inclusion probably will forward practically the promise of: the plan. She bases her confidence in the wise working out of votes for women" in the land east of India on the town-angled ground that the men are constitutionally indolent. and that the women have therefore taken charge, not only of all home affairs, but the bazaar trading as well. In both they have proved completely successful. This authority writes
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.