With the very ambitious ultimate object of consolidating the cultural feonseiousness of the Orient, an invitation to woman of all Asian Jcountries, to ce-operate in an All-Asian Women's Conference, has been sent out by representative women of India.
Japan has received and accepted the invitation through Miss Taki-ko Fujita, the correspondence secretary of the Japan Women's Committee for International Affairs Miss Fujita, writing to Mrs, Mar-garer E. Cousins, declares, inter alia: "My committee is happy and grateful to the women of India for taking the initiative in this matter, India is and has been the unchallonged intellectual leader of our [common continent and it is really Fhigh time that we, the women of Asia, should make a determined effort to understand one another and work together." The first reply to the invitation came from Mrs, Moh! of Jerusalem and the next from Syria. Then acceptances poured in from various other parts of Asia, except Soviet Russia, It is proposed to hold the conference at Lahore, during the La week of January, 1931, and the organizers of the conference declare that they do not consider that the political conditions in India will be such as to prevent the holding of the conference or to cause any discomfort to the delegates. The Indian organizers of the conference undertake to secure hospitality for the visiting delegates, to pay their return fare between the port nea feat to Lahore (Calcutta, Bombay or Karachi) and Lahore, to provide them with board and quarters in Lahore during the week of the conference and will do everything pos sible to make their visit to India an enjoyable and memorable one.
Women of non-Asian birth will be welcome as visitors, but will not have the right of speaking or voting at the conference, Board and lodging will be provided for them at Lahore free of charge. The meeting will be open to all women, Indian and foreign.
The primary object of the conference being to promote a sense of consolidated Asian sisterhood a distinct component of wor sisterhood and human kinship, all subjects will be discussed on broad general lines by the delegates sitting in common open session. It is proposed that the first two days will be spent in this method; the third day will be devoted to specialized committee meetings for synthesising thy views expressed; the fourth day for giving reports of these Committees and formulating resolutions in open sessions; the fifth for discussing future work of a synthetie Asian character, The President of the conference will be chosen from amongst the following: Madame Nour Hamad (President,, Women's Arabian Con ference), "Madame Nasik Abed, (Noted Syrian leader), Madame Sarojini Naidu (Indian national cader and poetess), Mrs. Inouye (Japanese educationist), and Madame Sun Yat-sen. Special stress is laid on the fact that, in selecting a President, the knowledge of languages is important. The proceedings will de carried on chiefly English and French, Arabic, Hindustani and Urdu will be the supplementary I In an appeal to Asia," representatives of Indian womanhood declare that behind the vast and varying divergences in Asia, there is a fundamental cultural unity, "In the extremes of honour and serfdom accorded to its womanhood, its worship of the the hope of the here re after that it places in the child;'in its marriage codes; in its illiteracy; in its present renaissance, Asia is one. Unfortunately, the cireunistances of our political groupings make the women of Asia; who are the fundamental custodians of our Oriental civi tion whose motivating ideal is the sanctity of life, practically unknown to one another. Thus, a Hind woman knows nothing of the Chinese; the beautiful Singhalese are ignorant of their charming Japanese sisters. The Japanese knows more about the Americans; the Hindus jabour the English; the. Japanese
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.