CHERCHEZ LA FEMME

In the days when the saloon exerted its much deplored influence on the home, women were prominent in reform, Now when the dramatic evidence is on the other side of the question, women are no less eager to have a finger in the controversial pie. Mrs. Charles H. Sabin, leader of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, stated last Wednesday that in her opinion a poll such as conducted by Yale's "Daily News" would find a similar hostility to Prohibition in any girls' college in the country. Mrs. Sabin seems to suggest that either the young women of America have acquired a taste for light wines and beer or have developed an eagerness to put an end to a hypocritical national blight. An ancient propriety, not particularly encouraged in modern feminine circles, points to only the latter.

Europeans traveling in America are apt to ejaculate at the degree with which this nation is woman-governed and they sometimes add, woman-ridden. In all chivalry, the American can ask such a European to name one country where' such conditions do not exist. The immense power which women have over what might be called the national pulse, bolstered by their influence in the education of the next generation, and culminated in some countries by the new power to vote, forces the defenseless male between a Devil of the emotions and a deep sea of domesticity. The only trouble with the present situation is that in this case the women are fighting among themselves, occasions which are usually bitter but unproductive.

The claims of Mrs. Sabin who numbers sixty thousand women in an organization so far without a membership drive are modest beside Mrs. Peabody's twelve million strong for reform. In spite of this apparent one-sidedness, a poll in women's colleges would furnish more vital statistics as to where this body of public opinion might swing in the future and would produce more interest in the unbiased survey of the Prohibition question.