On This Day, 13 March 1918

Birmingham Daily Post

Wednesday 13 March 1918

BIRMINGHAM WOMEN’S PROTEST.

MILITARY AUTHORITIES CRITICISED.

A vigorous protest against the action the British military authorities in allowing the use of licensed houses to British troops in France was made at the women’s meeting held at the Temperance Hall, Birmingham, yesterday, under the presidency Mrs. Cary Gilson. The resolution, which was proposed by Mrs. Julian Osler, was to the effect that the meeting learned with shame and indignation that the British military authorities had permitted or connived at the opening of tolerated brothels for the use of British troops in a number of French towns and called upon the Government to put all tolerated houses of debauchery out of bounds for British troops and to prohibit the establishment of such places in or near British camps.

In an address on the Matrimonial Clauses Bill, Lady Balfour urged that to no nation did the home life mean so much as to the English, and the bill now before Parliament had in it elements which would shatter and efface English home life as surely and as completely as German gunfire shattered Ypres. It was the English home-trained children who had made English men and women what they had been at the best, and the loss of that home training would see them at the worst. As to the argument for the relief unhappy marriages, what would they think of a Government which said the world was unhappy and they would give away poison as a relief. It seemed to her that this bill was something like such an action. Lady Balfour proposed a resolution emphatically protesting against the Matrimonial Clauses Bill, inasmuch as it would weaken the life-long bond of marriage and endanger the happiness of home life and the welfare of the children of the nation.

Lady Bowater, in seconding the resolution, said it would be a dreadful catastrophe if such a law were passed.

The resolution was carried.