WHAT WAR WILL DO.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 167, 20 April 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHAT WAR WILL DO.

HCSBANDS WILL BE FREE. REFORMED MARRIAGE. One of the few redeeming aspects of the great war is that it will entirely reform the status and labour bondage of husbands (writes A Hopeful Husband in the "Daily Mail"). The war has finally unmasked tho greatest of women's age-long deceptions of man. Ever since the first cave woman sent the first cave man into the cold wind to hunt the woolly rhinoceros while she snuggled! by the fire, woman has deceived man that she is his inferior in strength, endurance, courage, and achievement. For her own ease she has flattered him that his is tho dominating sex (mockery of the manacled wretch) and the directing sex (mockery of the laden beast), Her cave ancestress said, "Go out and hunt the sk : n, and T'll wear it," and the woman has said it ever since.

And then came this mighty upheaval. Woman, forgetting in its stress all the secret she is giving away, has buckledto in her millions and shown that there is hardly any work of man that she cannot do. She is driving motor lorries, she is twirling milk-cans into guards' vans while ancient porters mop their

Beloved that, in truth, his Beloval would scorn to possess. A topsy-turvy creed, this belief in woman 3 soultulness and te'.)c<?rnes«. here have been millions of love-sick Boinoos and never a love-sick Juliet; and in all history there has never been one woman who has looked at the moon and sighed (as we the soulful sex so often do) when no one was watching her.

But now comes man's emancipation, his halycon em. He can settle down now to his romances, his visions, his arts. He can cultivate his tender emotions sheltered from the rough world and unspotted' from its traffic. He can dream dreams—a futility that has ever been repugnant to the commonsense of woman.

For my own part I cherish already my own dream of the husband's golden era after the war.

It is seven at night, tho firelight glows, the curtains are drawn (not against Zeppelins, for they will be forgotton), the dinner smells savoury. Hark—the Pekingese barks! Brisk steps crunch the gravel path. The voice of a brave, strong woman is heard in the porch. Hat and dripping mackintosh are flung into the lobby in woman's hearty way. I leave my novel and fancy work. I glide into the hall. My wife has come home from the City!