THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1943 THE WARTIME HOME

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3278, 21 June 1943, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1943 THE WARTIME HOME

In her reference to “the magnificent contribution by the Women’s Institutes toward winning the war,” Her Majesty the Queen has sounded a note that will carry round the Empire a well-earned tribute. The wartime home has been one of the strongest fibres that have been woven into the core of British strength and resistance. It is to the women who have kept those homes together and carried on while their menfolk, and the wives and daughters of service age, have responded to the call of the fighting arms and the war industries, that profound gratitude is due. To-day (said the Queen) our villages are sadly empty. The young men are away fighting and. the girls, too, are away on their work. The great responsibility of carrying on rests with the older women, and how gallantly they are doing this.

Her Majesty’s tribute was addressed especially to the country women, and deservedly so, for the town-dweller seldom realises the weight and the complexity of the burden that falls on the shoulders of these women when left to carry on practically singlehanded. It is" in the country that the demand for domestic assistance, so urgently needed, is most acute. The Queen has eloquently praised the Women’s Institutes for what they have done to relieve the burden. The same tribute is applicable to the Women’s Institutes and organisations of a similar nature, in this and other Empire countries. This question of domestic assistance has assumed in wartime the dimensions of a serious problem. It was mentioned in Parliament recently by one of the speakers in the Financial Debate. The effects of the shortage are felt in both town and country, and it should be the concern of the Ministry of Manpower to find some means of alleviating them. With so many added cares and responsibilities thrown upon, the older women who are left to carry on the homes, there can be little time to concentrate upon aspects of domestic life which affect the upbringing and future welfare of the children. As a matter of public policy definite action of some kind is clearly needed, and should be taken. While it is due to the women of the wartime homes that their contribution to the winning of the war should be publicly acknowledged, as the Queen has so graciously done, it remains also for the State to mark its appreciation of this service by such steps as may be practicable to lessen the strain they have been and still are enduring.