HUSBANDS AFTER THE WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1751, 10 November 1917, Page 4

HUSBANDS AFTER THE WAR.

“The chief reason,” said a wellknown lady writer, “why our girls are making such foolish and dangerous haste to marry is that they are afraid, to quote one of them, that ‘there will be no husbands after the war except old men and boys.’ They are firmly convinced, thousands of them, that it is a case of ‘now or never.’ “Now, a little reflection will show how absurd this fear is. Of course, there will be plenty of young men, and some of the very best, ready and eager to join the ranks of the Benedicts when the world is at peace once more. “When the last gun is fired it is not likely that more than half-a-million of our brave boys will have been killed or permanently disabled; in other words, the number of marriageable men of fighting age will have been reduced by little more than six per cent. There will still be left fifteen potential husbands for every sixteen before the war. “We must remember, too, that before the war there were actually more marriageable men than women between the ages of twenty and thirty. From twenty to twenty-four there were 1,000 unappropriated men to 978 women, and between twenty and thirty the numbers were 1,000 to 992. Thus a reduction of a woman’s matrimonial chances by a shade over six per cent, is not a matter to pull a long face over. “The wise girl will be content to wait. She will have no lack of chances, and they wall be those most likely to lead to .happiness,”