In many respects, the only revolution that has been wrought in China during the past decade is the emancipation of women. Ten years ago (and older men can describe even more vividly the xepression of women) Chinese girls were very shy and backward. They had little to say, for the most part, because they read little and heard little except the popular novels in the old' forms, before Dr. Hu Shih got them out in a uniform ed:- tion. The main subject of conversation was awful personal gossip and the winnings at mab-Jongg. It was the Students Movement of 1919 that freed China's womanhood by throwing her into polities. Girls stood alongside boys and demanded that the Versailles Treaty should not be signed. In the students unions, girls had an equal voice with the boys, In the agitation among the merchants and Jahourers, the young ladies were often more effective than' the young men. They were more easily believed.
In the development of the Kuomintang, these young ladies played a most important role, but din the Communist agitation they were of the greatest importance. There are, in some of the big cities, highly respectable women who talk about women's suffrage, but that is all nonsense, for there is no male suffrage in China, But in the intellectual movements, in literary movements, in social efforts and in the advance from Canton to the Yangtze the contribution of the young ladi ing and in some ling. In the "White" terror an, following the "Red Terror" there, so many girls were killed that we have quite an in-x to the extent of their activities.
It was not always the girls from cities like Shanghai and Peking that played the principal roles in these movements. And few returned students were among them. It was rather the indigenous, country girl, fired by patriotic fervour, who' became the political mentor of her village, They bobbed their hai They tended for a time to companionate marriage. They naturally went to excesses, which is usually the first indication of incipient progress. But they moved, which is what their ancestors did not do. And that feminine energy is not quite lost in the present retardation of revolutionary activity. For under any circumstances, the womanhood of the land is changed. It is different. Its feet are unbound. It moves with alert, free, graceful steps. It has posture and It is strong and aggressive. The next generation in China will bear evidence to the new freedom and strength of China's woman.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.