ARE ENGLISH WOMEN SHY?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1036, 29 August 1911, Page 4

ARE ENGLISH WOMEN SHY?

There seems to be no pleasing some people, remarks “ Modern Society.” It is an axiom that the man who tries to please everybody pleases nobody. It was only the other day that a visitor to our shores, on returning to her native land, stigmatised the English woman as “brazen-faced.” Now, Eady Ward, who is here with her husband, the Premier of New Zealand, says our womenfolk are shy —they are too reserved, too cautious, too formal. All we can say is that Eady Ward might wait until she has been here five minutes, then she would be belter able to judge.- We never found the average Englishwoman shy or backward —from the highest to the lowest. She will find that there is nothing reserved or formal, for instance, about our feminines if she happens to come across a suffragette raid while she is here. The warmth and ardour with which they greet the police and any mere male opposition will surprise the lady from New Zealand. And if there is anything shy or reserved about some of the ladies who are out and about in “ hobbles ” and “ harems ” we have failed to discover it. Even

when an Englishwoman wants to snub you there is nothing reserved about the way she does that, either. It may be true that the average Englishwoman does not adopt the free and easy, hail-fellow-well-met sort of attitude of the ladies of the Southern Cross, and it is as well that she does not. If she did, in our crowded cities, there would soon be more trouble than there is now, and goodness knows there is enough already.