SHOULD GIRLS WEAR UNIFORMS?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 281, 1 June 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHOULD GIRLS WEAR UNIFORMS?

WHY 1 WISH THEY WOULDN'T By A FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT. Ju the London *' Daily Express." A good-natured criticism of ihe super-strenuous, mannish girl.) They say that many a girl in Uiis war has succumbed to tho glamour lit the uniform ; that many a marriage has been contracted, not booauso the girl fell in love with the man himself, but because she fell in love w'th the three stars or the three stripes on his sleeve. That I'm sure, is true ot only too many cases. There's no doubt about the lure of the uniform— when it's worn by a man. But what of the woman-worn Uniterm? What of the slouch-hatted, coarse-stockinged girls who are doing Mich splendid work in Army khaki and ill Navy blue? Do you find the susceptibilities of ineligible eligible males dazzled by these official trappings? Or do you, on the contrary, find these feminine uniforms act rather as deterrents tlwn as attractions?

The most disconcerting surpiv* 1 I have ever had occurred when I came homo from the front on my first leave. J needn't toil you how a fellow look*, forward to that short spell in the fairyland which, for fear of being •considered sentimental, we. have christened "Blighty.'' Everybody knows, everybody understands. And so you'll take it as a matter ut course when 1 mention that during my last five nights in France I dreamt steadily of my homrvcoming, of my return to the dear old unchanged order in the bosom of my family, of ihe way my mother and sister . . . oh, well, that's a sentence 1 don't know how to finish. Then I took a train and a ltoat and a train and a taxi and dashed up some steps, and a moment later—l wondered whether I was looking in the glass. Khaki uniform strapping gloves—puttees even! But, no. It was my muster—my dear old sister. My thvir old sister clapping me heartily on the back and asking me how I was, old chap. Suddenly a second figure appeared on the scene. A rather stout figure in blua, very forbidding and arm'slength}", rather like a mounted colonel policeman without the mount. Before 1 knew U the figure had embraced me. "Th's, r I told myself, "must be my mother. What a splendid fellow she is!'' Now, I'd like to explain at once that the shock soon wore off. It didn't take me long to discover that my mother and lister were still the same old mother and sister at heart, the change was merely superficial. No matter how masculne her attire, no matter how mavulinc her air, a woman's a woman for a' that. She. can't change herself radically. The mystery is that she should want to trv to.

I've talked this matter over with a

-con' of men, and every one of them has voiced pretty much the same opinion. We nil agree that the magnificence i f the work the-e women in uniform are doing makes the very highest praise wo can find a* tame as tnilk-and-i-oda. But we are all mystified :is to how that work is assisted by the suppression ol foniininicy and the gratuitous aping of the ways of men. CALL THEIR OFFICERS •SIR." My family being, so to speak, i:i the movement, I have seen a good deal ol tho t'irl 'n Uniform, and. with a'l rc--jMM-t. I can't h°'p rather wishing shr> wouldn't. Two cf my sister's uirforme.l friends called in one evening: one of them had •Topped her ha'r short, the other sported a monocle. Perhaps the*e were extreme ci-sos; hut I v. as told that in their particular corps all the girlsaluted their superior officer-, in military In-hion, and tailed them "sir."' When 1 asked why it wouldn't do just as well for them to call each other "ma'am," they -aid something strong about, discipline, but I never quite got the hang of it. And 1 still don t see why g'rls should prideJjiomsolvcs on having cultivated the stride of a swashbuckler and the vtwal stentoriamsm oi a yrrgenut-major. The other da\ a girl T know—a girl who is doing war work herself frcm dawn till du.sk, but who still drowse* m the dear old pre-war style—the other dav wh.-n she was standing in an omn - busful of women, a rather ierociouslookmg ladv in uniform actually got up and offered her a scat! And not ! ,:p; after this 1 heard one corps-girl call another ''George." . V, w I <'' n't want corp*-K» -ls t0 ' ,l oome chor.;s-gi.k. 1 Am't want them to parade their sos. But Ido want them to change those uniiomis and to ,nvo ui) seeking salvation in mas,-Uin-Ttv Men admiro girls just as m,,ch as ',r!s adn.:re men. but that.doc. t make men wiv.r \*"\™ x< -* '[ .'.; mak .-s them want to bo more manl>. • lhat i s t he linc4 eon.p ment . .jn can pav to a. girl; Wid the finest • omplSuagirlean pay to a man n, re|urn is-w.-!!, to return it, in kir.d.