EFFECT OF EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 217, 12 September 1940, Page 18

EFFECT OF EGYPT.

CAIRO'S SORDID ELEMENTS. RESPECT FOR N.Z. WOMEN. The healthy point of view expressed by an Auckland soldier regarding the sordid elements found in the life of Cairo was a great solace to his parents, who passed the letter on for publication in the belief that other parents, who may have misgivings, will find encour- ; agement in the boy's words. He emphasised that Cairo having revealed to the New Zealand troops the worst phases of the life of an eastern city, the effect has been to make them hold their own New Zealand women in even higher regard than when they went away. "Egypt has had a marked effect on some of us, in fact on the greater majority of us," writes the soldier. "When I make this statement I mean it in all its senses—physically, mentally and morally. "I think that the biggest change is in our moral outlook. There is nothing strange in this, though. Up until we arrived in Egypt we had only the vaguest conception of what prostitution could be like. / "We knew that such a thing existed, even though only on a modified scale, in New Zealand. Even then the majority of us never gave it a second thought. What a revelation this country proved to be! It is the greatest eye-opener we could have stumbled upon. The majority of us have seen these places now. Streets, even districts, given almost entiraly to brothels and various other sources of vice. "I know that a lot of people are going to say that the men are going to return coarse and cheap, but I beo- to differ, because it will have an opposite effect. I don't mean to say that we will return effeminate—that is impossible. But \7hat Ido mean is that after having seen all this, all that is cheap and vile in women, we shall hold our own women much dearer."