IS 'WOMANLINESS' IN DANGER?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 253, 23 February 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

IS 'WOMANLINESS' IN DANGER?

COXFESSIOXS (IF A (Mia OX THE LAND. (The writer, an English girl, tells how she "took the plunge into war work." anj of her doubts and ft\il"S.) 1 think it must liavc been jusi ahonb a year after the Kaksor's hordes invaded Belgium that 1 really began tc understand there was a war on.

Kor many months the patriotic song? -the idle speec-he—the gay little flags on the. motor-bikes—the knitting of a tew socks and mufflers—satisfied what needed satisfying in me. Even when Peter said good-bye on that strano-eiy sunny morning at Charing Cro>s and I felt that my life had suddenly goao our like <\ candle, 1 didn't grasp that I. too might, play my part, might reallv put my shoulder to the wheel.

lruo, girls were beginning to pour into munition works, to volunteer for the, .and. even to appear startlinglv in the lubes. But, somehow, I .seemed 3 :tt!o apart from them. Thev could • stand it. They had been 'bred in sterner circumstances. And. subconsciously I think, 1 was afraid of losing that suht.e retinement with which my b'rth and education had, perhaps endowed me.

1 remembered how Peter had once told me that he admired me because I was "a woman. ■ "Do you mean," I said, because I wear pretty clothes and have golden hair and a pHureI'stcard ops*.' -X O ,-> he answercdj giaycly. •■ I mrail something more than tnat. And how 1 treasur. .1, now. th, thought of the •somethin" mm* than that -how I longed to keep it in me always lor his delight. But I began thinking—and, presently, I stopped calling young men "slackers because it made me blush. Ono day I found myself walking up and down outside a Labour Exchange Something told me to go in—something else told in? not to. You've no idea what passing through those swing-doors meant to me: rough hands, untidy tabits, lowering all my standards, getting broadened almost, perhaps, to coarseness— hardened spiritually a* well as physically; and, oh, yes, losing that precious •■something' which was my only hope in life.

Ihose ominous swing-doors! One pu>h and it was all over! For a week I hovered near them like a moth around a flame. Then, one morning 1 took the plunge and found mvself answering categorical questions with a guilty feeling that all I b aid was being taken down as evidence against me. Three weeks later I was hoeing turnips on a farm in Leicester.

Of course, I wrote to Peter and told him exactly what 1 had done, tfut every morning wnen I ro.se and looked m my glass and saw how sunburnt I was getting, and how freckled, and how hard the palms of my hands and tmmanicured the nails of mv fingers had become; and when I remembered how I gobbled up my lunch, and how long my strides were getting, and how 1 managed on two hairpins, and cleaned fowl houses and called Jce. the farmhoy, "Mitey"—

When I realised all thee things, an J when I realised, too, that I really

DIDN'T MIND THEM AT ALL

—rather enjoyed them in fact—l knew that the radical change I had so feared had taken place in me. Every night when, worn out with digging and getting up !>cfore five, 1 lay down to rest. I used to say, "Goodnight. Peter," hefore I dosed my eyes. And once, by accident or (as superstition to'd me) by the will of fate I found I had said "Good-bye. Peter." Did it really mean good-bye? WHAT THE FARMER SAID. 'J ho more I thought about it, th« more whole-heartedly I threw mvself into my work to keep from thinking. One afternoon my employer came upon me up to my shoulders in a pit. 1 was busy digging. "Gracious!" he said. "How you do work, surely. 'Town lassies,' I told tne missus, 'hain't no use, with their fal-lals and their graces.' But, dang me, there ain't no fal-lals, no graces about you, missy. Vou lie real farmer's stock." He was the kindest of men. but he could have spoken kinder words to me than those. And' his wife, too, when she declared in her rough, good-hu-moured way. that they had "knocked all the nonsense out of me." only made mo feel suddenly serious when I had boon feeling gay. And then came—Peter.

I'eter, swinging suddenly and inexplicably down the lane, then beginning to run when he saw me —me, in my overalls, with a pitchfork in my hand's, and a fate like a stoker's. Everything went round before my eyes—Peter and the lane and the cows and the and the haystack, and—and suddenly I found my breath was being squeezed out of my body. . . . Of course, 1 told him what had happened! to me: but he only laughed. And then suddenly he be.-ame very grave, and lie said : '• Look here. I"ve been war-working, too. I've done grimmer and rottener tlrngs out there than T ever thought it possible for men to do. If you're changed, so have I. Perhaps I oughtn't to a.sk vor to marry me, but—well, I do. What do vou s.iv?"

I'm not quite sure thai T said any. thing.