WOMAN'S WORLD.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 94, 15 January 1919, Page 2

WOMAN'S WORLD.

(By InoaEH.J

(SOCIAL AND PERSONAL Presentation to Dr. and Mrs. Weeks. A social gathering of the parishioners of Clirist Church, .Nelson, was held in honour of the silver welding of tho Dean of Nelson and .Mrs. Weeks, and was numerously attended. The hall was decorated with pink 'flowers, and on arrival Mrs. Weeks ,and Miss Eileen Weeks were presented with beautiful bouquets by ■ the daughters -of the churchwardens, Miss Irene Cockburn and Miss Jeaunie Field. The guests of the evening, attended by Miss Eileen Weeks, with' Canon Dart as "groomsman," entered the room to the strains of tlie. Wedding March, and this.was the keynote of tho enjoyable proceedings. . .■-,:■ Bishop Mules said that the Dean's many friends and the members of his congregation and of his parish had felt that they could not allow : the occasion of his silver wedding to pass without giving expression to' their affectionate regard for himself and Weeks. Amid applause, Bishop Mules presented to Dr. and Mrs. Weeks some pieces of silver, plate—a pair of entree dishes and «• breakfast dish. . Canon Dart added felicitations on behalf of the clergy. . •' Tho Dean, who returned thanks, for his family and himself,- tendered their gratitude for the sympathy and friendship shown in the past three years,' and hoped that in the years that remained there'would be a continuance of real fellowship and still further progress in tho highest and best things. After a' bright musical programme, the evening closed with the singing of the National Anthem.

Mrs. W. H. Barnicoat is staying with her daughter, Mrs. Wall, , at Wafiganui.

A quiet wedding took place at St. Paul's pro-Cathedral, Wellington, on January 4, when Miss Grace Waddingluu, of Masterton, was married to Lieutenant Chambcrlm (who left-New Zealand with the 4th lleinforcements), of Auckland. The bride, who carried a pretty [bouquet of palest pink heath, woro a frocluof white net over taffeta, and a simple veil'en light with orange blossoms. She was attended by her sister, Miss : Sissie Waddington, and her -little niece; Judith Thompson. After the ceremony Mr. and' Mrs. A. 0.--T. Chamberlin left for Auckland on their honeymoon' trip. . J

"It's women who. make or mar man and tho universe, and when wo are brave'enough to acknowledge that-wo will all learn better together."—G. B. Lancester ; in "Tho Savjguys." deferring to t-lio above sweeping statement, Edwin Pugh says in "The Bookman" that he does not quarrel with this judgment, but- that -the remarkable thing is that so many stories written nowadays are based on ibis assumption of the dominaneo of women over men— and not only men, but destinies of humankind. "It was not always bo. Man was not always so abjectly the sport of women—in novels, anyway. The heroines of not so very long ago were mostly plastic, clinging creatures to whom Byron's famous pronouncement mostly fitly applied. Lovo was to them their whole existence, whilst to men it was a thing apart. That the interrelation of the sexes should have undergone so sudden and drastic a change iu so short a while may be'duo eithor to the circumstanco that so 'many women aro now'doing men's work, or to tho still more dismal fact that tho flower of our manhood being just now absent front our midst, only tho very old, tho very young, and tho physically unfit are left to carry on the old tradition of masculine master fulness. There is,, gf courso, the alternative, hypothesis that theso presentdayl novelists may all be : wrong and that men and women are still men and women." Miss M. Rogers (Featherston) has been visiting.her parents, the Rev. J. H. and Mrs. Rogers, 4he' Vicarage, Timar'u. Miss Sogers leaves shortly for England jvith Colonel and Mrs. Neave. Mrs. E. V. Palmer and Miss Peggy Palmer, of Gisborne, are staying with Miss Tabart in'.Christchnrch. Mrs. Hugh Williams, of: Laii6downe, Masterton, who has been spending a few days at Taumarunui, has . gone down the river to Wanganui. Mr. and Mrs. P. C. M'Laren have gone -to Christchnrch. Mrs. Wilfordj Wellington, and Miss B. M'Lean, Dunedin, aro the guests of Miss M'Lean, Ardgour, Timaru. The visitors to Hanmer entertained the patients and staff of, St. Mary's Hospital on_ Thursday. There has been very little in the way of gaiety since the epidemic, and the guests and hosts alike enjoyed the evening. Mrs. M. H. E. Gorringe, of Levin, as a memorial to the late Sergeant M. 11. E, Gorringe,. has donated tho cost of the reading and writing room and lounge in the Y.M.C.A. Building for Convalescent Soldiers on Pukeroa Hill, Rotorua. The late Sergeant Gorringe was killed near Ypres iu December, 1917. The endowment.of. a great university for women is the scheme proposed as a memorial to the women war workers of Great Britain. • The idea is a very, fine one, and it is to be, hoped that .those women who are responsible for tho proposal will meet with ' every support in carrying it to a successful issue. During her stay : in Christchnrch Mrs'. Johnson TopHss entertained the sailors at the Lyt-telton Seamen's Institute.

MATTERS OF INTEREST FROM FAR AND NEA&

Mr. and Mrs. S. E. M'Carthy mid their family havo taken a hoiiso in Holimrood. Hoad, Feiidalton. Mr. M'Carthy was formerly S.M. ■ in Napier and Wellington.

Major Hugh Short and Mrs. Short aro passengers from England by the llunkinc, which will arrive in New Zealand this month. Major Short was attached to the Now Zealand Medical Corps, and left with the Main Body. He was invalided from Gallipoli, and afterwards was appointed medical officer at Hornchuroh. From there he was promoted. to the. position of senior medical officer at Sling Camp. Since July, 1918, Major Short has been travelling- between the military hospitals in England, finally eerving at Walton as specialist in diseases of-the chest. Sergeant-Major Chappell, a popular member of the. St. Mary's Hospital staff, and his bride returned to Han.mer from their honeymoon on Friday, and were Riven a great reception. The Hospital Band met them upon their arrival. Dr. and' Mrs, Cockayne have arrived in Christchnrch from tho' north.

WOMEN'S LAND ARMY' . r . (By Anne O'Hagan in tho "Queen.") Watching the representatives of the Women's Land Army .on Fifth -Aveiuio during a recent parade to get members, it might be pardonable to regard them merely as one of the picturesque alleviations of-the-war, a sort of operetta, interlude ..in serious business fighting. Thoy- looked so pretty—their "dress uniform".!of blue denim bloomers and smock did not too entirely conceal the fact that the summer's work had trained down or uptrained, as need might he, the muscular young figures to an effective degree of grace and litheness.' Their faces ' beneath straw hats wero brown, and tho merry hands that extended subscription forms were brown, too, but they afforded indisputable testimony to the fallacy of the theory long cherished by bona fido sons of tho soil, namely, that fingernails must be black when hands arc brown. .

But the Women's Land Armv in America is anything but a pretty band of players, nor is it merely an effective band of advertisers. It is a working organisation which lias rendered very real service to the country and to the world during the two summers of tho United States' participation iu tho war, and is preparing to render a much larger service iu the coming summers, whether thbso are of war or of reconstruction. It is organised in thirty-nine States. In twenty-three it already has administrative 'boards on the National Board, which co-ordinates the work of all these. In twenty-three States, in which ndministrativo boards had already been formed, the Land Army had units at'work last summer.

In Now York State,, in which . tho Land Army had its origin in this counthere 'wero numerous units comprising over 1000 girls at.work. There are, of courso, .thousands of women who. have taken up farm work in the' present emergency without joining the Land Army.or"any other organisation. That wi|s the talo-before the ten-day parade for .new members, for which certain blue denim "farmerettes" wero released from.corn, husking \atid potato digging." That parade' aimed at :a membership of a million, and although all tho returns are not yet in it is believed that the total will not ,fall far short of this number.

Tho million will not be farm-workers. They .will form an organisation behind the farm-workers-v-behind them financially, sympathetically, and morally. The establishment of a camp involves a fairly large initial expenditure for tents or- cottages, ' furnishing, work clothes, motor-trucks to carry the girls to and fro from their, work, and New York State alone expects to havo 200 such camps next' senson. After tho camp isonce established the two dollars which each girl receives for an eight-hour day's work'(maintains it. The camps are run co-operatively, and many girls have had remaining at tho end of the'month about three ■pounds- each. Every camp is under the charge of a responsible camp mother, or chaperon, and the girls'arthired out in teams of two or more. No girl is accepted as a candidate by the Land Army <without a physician's certificate stating that she can stand the work; thus jneligibles are weeded out before^ they get to the.camp. But most physicians will give'even an apparently delicate applicant a passport.' because hard work in the open-air is a recognised cure for- most ills. .

; Girls must, of course, give satisfactory references as to their character, both for the protection of their fellows in camps and the communities to which they are assigned. There is )io single type of '-'farmerette." All sorts of girls are brought together in this healthy democracy. In New, York last summer there were - teachers-, stenographers, telephone operators, art students, and librarians'. From all over the country come enthusiastic reports.of. what the Army has done during the past season. Nearly 10,000 girls gave full-time and 5400 half : timq to work. -Manv women's colleges conducted training 'schools from which camp leaders- will go out among the various units next season. • ■ "

In 1876 Colonel Lawton rode from Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska, to Sidney, Nebraska, some 125 miles, : with dispatches ■ for General Crook, . in twenty r six hours. In 1873 Colonel Mackenzie rode his' command! into 'Mexico after Stickapoo Indians, beat them in a. sharp fight, and returned across the border, making 145 miles in- twenty-eight hours. In 1874 he again rode his command into Mexico after horse thieves, making there and back eighty-five miles in fifteen hours.