CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE EAST. [To ERZ EDITOR
OP THE " SPECTATOR."] you allow me to draw attention to a Conference on the Christian Education of Women in the East which was held at Oxford early in September last ? The members were some hundred and fifty University women engaged in teaching, and the speakers included the President of the Association of Head- Mistresses, the Principal of St. Mary's College, Lancaster Gate, the Head-Master of Repton, and other educational leaders. Work in the East was represented by Mr. Arthur Mayhew, of the Indian Educational Service, and Miss Garrett, Inspectress of Schools in Eastern Bengal and Assam, as well as by men and women who have had long experience in the service of missionary societies.
All the speakers alike insisted upon the urgency of the appeal which is made to the West by the needs of Eastern women and girls as they emerge from the seclusion of centuries into the freedom brought to them by Western civilization. The character of the education which they receive at this crisis is of supreme importance in determining the future, not only of Eastern nations, but of ourselves. Women are taking a conspicuous place in the new national movements, and the social proBlonan which confront Eastern reformere are closely bound up with those :Which perplex us here at home.. Shall education give to the women of the East the ability to secure the material benefits of Western civilization, and leave them with nothing to take the place of the ideals and the restraints of the older faiths which are unable to stand before Western science ? Or shall it offer to them a spiritual ideal high enough to satisfy their religious cravings, a moral power by which to cope with the bewildering difficulties of their conditions and a discipline which shall teach them that true freedom means not licence but voluntary service ?
In view of the importance of. the subject a Provisional Com. mittee has been appointed to act as a body of reference, the members being Miss Douglas, Head-mistress of the Godolphin School, Salisbury ; Miss Gray, Head-mistress of St. Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith; Richardson, of Westfield College, Hampstead ; Miss Wood, Principal of the Cambridge Training College ; and Miss Woodall, Head-mistress of Milton Mount College, Gravesend. Miss de Selincourt, Principal of the Lady Muir Memorial Training School, Allahabad, is Honorary Secretary to the Committee, and any suggestions or questions may be sent to her at 26 Belsize Grove, London, N.W. A. report of the Con- ference has been prepared at the request of the members, and its publication has been kindly undertaken by the Student Christian Movement. The price will be 2s. net.—I am, Sir, Ise.,
CAROLINE A. J. SKEW., D.Lit. Westfield College, Hampstead, N.W.
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