ALWAYS WOMEN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 207, 8 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

ALWAYS WOMEN.

NEITHER SAINTS NOR SIRENS

EFFECTS THE WAR MAY HAVE

By MARY MAGNESIA

It has amused me much of late to read in the daily Press the delightfully twaddly and prophetic utterances of cosmicists re the status of woman after the war. Some insist that we shall be quite " hoity-toity" to the sterner sex, and earn our own livings, and think ourselves as good as anybody else—and a good deal better. Adam is to ue relegated to any old place he can have the luck to grab, wlv'le lofty womanhood' struts and strides and swashbuckles through every walk of life. The luckless wight who dares to criticise the action, morals or mentality of Us in those days will be worthy of being handed out a bucketful of V.C.'s and D.C.M.'s. With very little imaginative effort one can vision a rot all up and down George-street through the foolhardy Idiocy of some pet-poodle bus- ■ band*who dared to quest : on the perfect edibility of a hammerhead scone. Little wonder that 1 and my sisterhood are clapping up every effort of the "Women to rule" prophet, and trying hard to develop a nice large faith in their psvehologically-turned sentences. There'is. however, another class of writers. These love to picture us as chasing the scarce and valuable male, who in consequence, will lead the most gioriouslv exciting existence yet enjoyed by'man through aI) the ages. We see ourselves fighting tooth and nail for the priceless quarry —a rather silly proceeding considering the obvious risk of escape even after the capture of the rare species. You will not'ee that no note of hoity-toityism creeps inte> this prophet's programme. We haven't n strut left in us. We are only too glad to be n : ce to the lordly male in order tha we may retain the proud distinction of being able to exhibit h'm—adorning the best furniture—on at home days. In those days shall no wise .virgin waste her time" in the study of mathematics or quadratics or any of the higher "ics" and "isms". But nightly shall the classes iii Vampires and Sirenics be thronged to overflowing by eager females. These are not to he rosily-luxurious days for the fair sexWorking overtime to capture and retain man will keep her pretty nose to the grindstone very effectually, while the mmh-pursued will be enjoying himself like a sol'tary cluck in a garden plot where 740 worms compete for the honour of wiggling into his beak. The croaking ones who foretell this style of regime are not popular, and every daughter of Eve reading, shrugs her shoulders and refuses to entertain the proposition for a moment. The last class of prophet has us all sweetness and femininity, doing the ciinging-v : ne act in every chapter, and specialising in preserves and homomade jam. These seers seem to imagine tah the war has been invented merely as a great eliminator of all our sin and wickedness. After it, therefore, we will be shorn of our little faults and failings, collected through all the centuries, and become of such saintly calibre that the angels on h : gh will probably develop a thick rim of verdigris on their haloes through jealousy of our unsurpassed virtue. As for man, who doesn't get much discussion in this programme, his little role. 1 fancy, is to be very greatly impressed by this sweet-ly-domesticated exhibition, and very, very good in consequence of the impression. So this writer leaves us —thj millenium and the curtain descending to t'<.o tune of Griselda and to the perfume of bottled preserves and lavenderstored sheets.

And after, having read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, one wishes to remark with the jolly but rather bibulous old Persian, "One thing is certain and the rest is lies!" the "one tiling'' being that wo shall be women ns always. Before, during or after a hundred wars, we shall, as always, love to dress, to fl : rt, to lova, to lie lov."d, to drink hot tea and eat col' 3 ice-cream, to listen to scandal, to sacrifice, to be sacrificed, and to enjoy reading the abstruse, psc-hological discussions of Ourselves in the daily Press.