HOUSEKEEPING LESSONS FROM OUR ALLIES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 113, 15 January 1915, Page 7

HOUSEKEEPING LESSONS FROM OUR ALLIES.

Englishwomen are certainly loss wasteful about food than Australasian housekeepers of all classes. Yet they have always been considered unthrifty, and the fact is being driven home to them by the presence of thousands of Belgian women, all of them wonderfully expert and economical in all that pertains to domestic management. An English lady relates one incident which illustrates the superiority in domestic economy of our allies over British women, whether in England or in Australia. She came across a family of Belgian refugees in a half-starved condition. They were living as boarders with an English working-class woman, who was being well paid for providing them with food, and was conscientiously spending the money according to her lights. The result was semi-starvation for her guests. It was then arranged that the Belgians should cater and cock for themselves; and they were asked to fix the sum on which they could cater properly, without any stinting. They did so, and the sum the Englishwoman had spent on catering for them. A.nd on this they are now living in great comfort, with as much good, wholesome food as thc-v can eat.

Much of what we call by the modern name of domestic science appears to be almost an instinct with French and Belgian women. It would seem that those who have set before themselves the ideal of making every young woman into a tolerable housekeeper might learn much by studying the methods of French and Belgian women, compared with whom even good housekeepers among us are merely amateurs. Wo go to Paris to study art, to Brussels to study singing. When domestic management is considered even one-tenth as important as painting and singing, we shall probably send promising students to study the marvellous domestic skill of onr allies, so that they may come back and teach us lessons which wo sorely need.