WHAT WAR WILL DO

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2754, 25 April 1916, Page 3

WHAT WAR WILL DO

HUSBAND'S WILL BE FREE

REFORMED MARRIAGE

One of the few redeeming aspects of the groat war is that it will entirely reform the status and labour bondage ill husbands (writes "A Hopeful Husband in the "Daily Mail"). The war has linally unmasked tho greatest of women's age-long deceptions of man. Ever since the first cave woman sent ttre first cave man into tho cold wiud to hunt |che woolly rhinoceros whiie she snuggled by tho fire, woman lias deceived man that. she is his inferior in strengtu, endurance, courage, and achievement. For her own ease die has llattered him that his is tho yoininating sex (mockery of the manacled wrotch) and the directing sex (mockery of the laden beast). Her pave ancestress said, "Go out and bunt tho skin, and I'll wear it," and the woman has said it ever srnca.

And then'came tin's mighty upheaval. Woman, foi-getting in its stress all the secret she. is giving away, has buckledto in her millions' and shown that there is hardly any work of man that she cannot do. Sli6 is driviiig motor-lor-ries, sho is twirling milk-cans • into guards' vans while ancient porters mop tfieir laces in amazement at new records tn bang and speed, she is doing the post-man's round, the liftman's gateclanging, the ploughman's furrow, the lamp-lighter's circuit, the sweep's ohimney, the windoiv-eleaner's: mountaineering, the carman's deliveries, the bank clerk's lightning arithmetic. She is- 1 standing long hours at tho mechanic's lathe. The woman insurance agent trips in all weathers down ' miles of .mean streets, the woman dentist is following the woman doctor, the janitors of all the learned and lucrative professions are trembling at her uearing footsteps. She is perhaps nearer to the Houso of Commons that over Mrs. Pankhurst could have brought her. I can envisage even the Woolsack in ber future—albeit that she 1 will want it. recovered daily to match her change of robes. Shall man, then, looking forward to the new world after the war, be anxious and pessimistica!? Not he.. Shall ho be fearful that woman, the worker, will henceforth take the bread out of his mouth, when woman, the worker, will go-forth to earn the loaves while be, the priceless and rare One, sits at home P Woman has given away her secret and sold her ancient, birthright of easo. It is for us, the real tonder sex, to see now. that she docs not regain it. The mere dream of that idle and carefree future makes me wish that the belligerents of Europe had been mbra respectul to the mission of Mr. Ford. Mill's Emancipation. At last there is promise of man coming into his real kingdom. The curtains, are drawing aside of that repose which is his by right but which has always been usurped by woman. Woman'has always been credited with being the tender 'sex, /the imaginative sex, the romantic sex. Woman lias always been shielded from the world because of her sensitive delicacy. 'Woman has not gone-out. into the hurly-burly because tho, dust and clamour of the market were thought unfitted to her. But sho has disproved all that in these days. She is as good as the best of us. -It is my own belief that she is far more competent than incst of us. She has more determination, less sentiment, more energy, more rutli. 'i

Man is the romantic sex, the sensitive sex, the imaginative sex. There is no woman in whose whole body there is as much ronmancp as in man's little linger. Woman is the directing. sex, the hard, practical sex, the sex that cannot be "blarneyed" or deceived. George Meredith (who know move about woman than any man who ever wrote on that difficult and thorny problem) said that "the friendship of'most men is'purchaseable with an air of good fellowship and a cigar." But woman is immovable, for hers is the practical sex, the sex with ten acute common, senses that wo weak men possess not. , It is the .strangest of paradoxes that man has alivays ridiculously attributed all those softnesses .and sensibilities to his Beloved that, in truth, his Beloved would scorn to' possess. A topsy-turvy creed, this belief, in woman's soulfulness and tenderness. There have been millions of love-sick Komeos and never a love-sick Juliet; and in all history there has never been one woman who has looked at the moon and sighed (as we the soulful sex so often do) when no- one was watching her. ■ f ■

But now comes man's emancipation, his lialcyon era'. He can settle down now to his romances, his visions, his arts. He can cultivate his tender emotions sheltered from ;.the rough world and unspotted from it's traffic. He can dream dreams—a futility that has ever been repugnant to the common sense of woman. , *

For my own part, I cherish already my own dream of the husband's golden ora after the, war.

. It is seven at night, the firelight glows, the curtains are. drawn, (not against Zeppelins, for they will be forgotten), tho dinner smells savoury. Hark—the Pekingese barks! Brisk steps crunch:the gravel path, - The voice of a brave, strong woman is heard in the porch. Hat and dripping macintosh are Hung into tlie lobby in woman's hearty way; I leave my novel and fancy work. I glide into tlie ball. My wife'has come home from the City!