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A EDITORIAL QRLD CONFERENCE AND CANADA zâ€"Few events in Women's Institute history have stirred Canadian women as the recent A.C.\V.\V. conference has done. Havrng women here from every continent in the world has deepened our interest in the problems of people in countries less favored than ours. Talk to Canadian Institute women anywhere now and you are pretty Sure to find an intelligent and urgent concern for assrsrance to underdeveloped countries. You will find, too, a new feeling of unity and interdependence with coun- try women the world over. These are natural results of a world conference. But we have missed the spirit of the conference if it has not also awakened us to a new concern for the welfare of all the country women in Canada, and made us see the need of more unity among ourselves. At the conference the directness of the women who have had to deal at first hand with hunger and ignorance and mass disease was sometimes rather startling to our complacency. For instance when we discussed how to spread information about United Nations and talked about our public meetings and big-name radio broadcasts, a woman from India asked, "What are you doing to make the peasant in the masses know that United Nations has anything to do with him?" Maybe we haven‘t any "peasants" in this country but we have a lot of people who don't know "that United Nations has anything to do with them." \Ve forget that "the joiners live on the front concessions” and that there are hundreds of men and women and young people in Canada who haven't been brought into any of our community groupsâ€"not even into our churches. It was a thrilling experience to mix with women from all over the world, and the spirit at the final banquet was what the orchestra leader called "really something." The orchestra played national airs and everyone applauded. A Hindu woman joined in "A Song of India," singing in her own tongue. When they played "The Irish \Vasherwoman" the delegate from Southern Ireland got up and danced an Irish jig. A French Canadian led us in "Alouette." The women weren't just having a good time; the feeling of togetherness was strong. And some Canadian women must have been thinking that if we can have this sense of unity with women from all over the world, why can't we get together more in Canadaâ€"the Women's Institutes of Ontario and the Cercles de Fermieres of Quebec and all the rural women from Newfoundland to British Columbia. Almost the next day the F.W.I.C. president announced that the neat national meeting will not be the usual board meeting, but a big convention of Canadian rural women. Already the world con- ference is having its effect in Canada. mg/W R 1954