BRITISH WAR BRIDES.

Otaki Mail, Volume 26, 7 April 1919, Page 4

BRITISH WAR BRIDES.

SOME STRAIGHT HITTING BY ONE I OP THEM. *■••--■■•; The "Aaekland "Horald" is being deluged with, letters from and .about, war brides. Hers is a particularly lively sample:— Sir, —As one of the much-discussed soldiers' wives who had dared to come to a British country.with her husband, may I overstep tttp. canons of. good tagte by offering wm? criticism of the New Zealand women, who appear to regard us as, so&e strange ki*d of predatory animal guilty of descending on the sacred fold and stealing therefrom a superman? If the ladies who are so wroth at our dreadful conduct in snaring these unfortunate New Zealand soldiers are right, it is, of course, quite wrong for an Englishman to come ■to New Zealand in order to marry a i New Zealand girl. In my humble opinion, the Now Zealand women who have so harshly criticised us, find time for this sort of thing because they have so little to do, and have remained blind, deaf and over-dressed during a period "whon the whol« feminine world outside the Australasian dependencies of England were physically helping the men of the Empire to'boat the Germans. I find that New Zealand women are singularly - ignorant of everything but. their own immediate and-domestic surroundi.ngs, totally unaware of the-great i sacrifices other- women have made, . ready even to criticise the various dia--1 lects which we English women are ! proud to speak,,and using a kind of -exaggerated eocknoy "patios" insufferably galling when it is used in

derisi'oJi of the women from whence they, themselves sprung. I find in New Zealand what we would call "working women" at Home wearing, anything iip to £2O worth of clothes, and con-' sidering us "dowdy" because we have been forced in England to those economics which were necessary to vislory. I J'md an almost universal diglike to domesticity, an mboniinuble 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 moment all the alleged "pleasure" this country affords.. I seriously object to . th» assumption of superiority in the New Zealand woman. She is in no senso superior, except in the ability to spend more on her back than she can afford. I object to the pitying tone of women and officials alike. They describe us as. "very good type," just as any of your preposterous red tape officials would describe a newly imported sheep or cow. I find they are rather surprised at the babies—babies being less common in fkese new and enlightened lands than in poor old "Darkest England." Englishwomen who took their courage in both hands, as I suppose th« Englishwomen did who with Englishmen founded this country, are disillusioned. They believed, as I did, that the hospitality shown to aVJ strangers —even strangers of foreign

blood—in England was as common to Auckland as it is to London. No doubt in time thi» aggressive «nd extremely rude antagonism down; but in the meantime many „voung and inexperienced British women, who believed they were coming among friend', are astonished that people who pride themselves on being Britis*, also prklc themselves on abusing Britons. ANNIE SHAW (nco Bichie).