THE WAR BRIDES.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 10 April 1919, Page 3

THE WAR BRIDES.

Some hard things have been said by New Zealand girls about our soldiers marrying English women, and bringing them out to Maoriland with them. And some, at least, of the "war brides " from England have hotly resented this criticism, and given ''as good as they got." Vide the letter appearing in a local daily recently in which the writer is an English girl, " I find," writes this scornful young thing, "in New Zealand what we call 'working women' at Home wearing anything up to £20 worth of clothes. I fin.d an almost universal dislike of domesticy, an abominable disregard of duty to children, a fixed intention to destroy the country by ' race suicide,' and a sort of hectic rush to squeeze out of the mcn\ent all the alleged 'pleasure' this country affords." I confess I don't quite know what a"hectic rush" is. But I gather that th_is -lady intends to be very severe. If she talks as forcibly she writes, lam glad I am ' n,ot her ———, but no matter. This, however, I will say, that some of our girls have been guilty of rudeness and bad ! taste in sneering at tbeseEnglish i war-brides. After all a man has a perfect light tq please himself when he chooses a wife, and for any New Zealand girl to abuse him for exercising this right is to suggest that she is afraid of being " left on shelf," as another English woman, in writing-to-the paper before referred to, puts it.