The National Union of Guilds for citizenship, which consists of nearly 160 Townswomen's Guilds throughout Great Britain, held its annual council meeting yesterday at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington.
Mrs Corbett Ashby, in her presidential address, said that the guild movement was only four years old. Women from all over the country, of different outlook and different background, were bound together by a passionate desire to be of real service to home, town, and country. They were knit together in this fellowship of service because they realised that more than ever in the world of today women had opportunities of service which had only lately been open to them.
It was really only since 1928 that women had been full citizens. For over 100 years distinguished women had been ceaselessly striving for education and opportunities for women. It was no longer deportment and a little French, some very bad sketching and not very good music. Scientists used busily to weigh women's brains and discover that they were deplorably light. Women's brains apparently contained fewer crinkles than men's and they were thought to be not quite so intelligent as men. In spite of this handicap, as they looked around the world and saw how much of education, science, research, and service women could give to the world today, they could feel a deep debt of gratitude to those women who fought so magnificently for the solid basis of education that women could now enjoy.
Again and again it had been a woman who had had a new vision of what the world needed. They found their influence everywhere was growing and there was greater need for them. As councillors, magistrates, and Ministers, in municipal and Civil Service, in every branch of voluntary social work women were devoting themselves untiringly to the general well-being of the community.
