when the power is theirs, women also may be unwisely tempted to erect a new form of sex barrier.  To do so would be to play into the hands of those enemies who are always raising the voice against equal pay for equal work.  The most suitable candidate for a post is the one who should be selected, irrespective of sex.  It is this principle that women are endeavouring to establish.  They must do so by scrupulous fairness when the power is theirs:  by making themselves indisputably most fitted, when they are knocking at the closed door.

One further topic needs discussion in this section—­the continued employment of married women in University posts.  At present there is no universal rule, and every case has to be judged on its merits.  Every lecturer who marries, can and ought to help to form the precedent that continuance of professional work is a matter for her own decision and is not one that concerns governing bodies.  Already a good many women, mothers as well as wives, have set the good example and have established their own position, sometimes without question, sometimes as the result of a difficult struggle.  It is clear that Universities, with their long vacations, and with their established recognition of long absences for specified purposes, have less ground than most employers to raise difficulties for married women.  Thus the holder of an A.K. scholarship may travel for a year, in order, by the wise provision of the founder, to enlarge his or her mind and bring back new experience to University organisation, research, and teaching.  The woman who fulfils the claims of sex, and to do so journeys into the realm where life and death struggle for victory, cannot thereby be unfitted for the profession for which she has qualified.  Enlargement of mind and new experience will help her too, in the daily routine.  It is for her alone to decide whether new claims and old can be reconciled.  If in practice in an individual case they cannot, then and only then has the University or College a right to interfere, and on no other ground than that the work suffers.  Since women workers are as a rule only too conscientious, this contingency is unlikely often to arise.

[Footnote 1:  Her local authority may, however, have claims upon her, if she has promised to teach in an elementary school.]

[Footnote 2:  Trained teachers only, men and women, will be admitted to the new Register.]

[Footnote 3:  See tables at the end of this section, pp. 82 to 136.]

[Footnote 4:  On the Continent even in Germany, and in the U.S.A. several women have been elected to University chairs.]

[Footnote 5:  Dr Benson, Staff Lecturer at Royal Holloway College, was raised to the status of University Professor of Botany in 1912 without open competition; Dr Spurgeon was appointed to the new University Chair of English Literature, tenable at Bedford College as from 1st September 1913, after open competition.  These professorships are the only two held by women at the University of London but there are several women Readers.]