WOMEN AND WAR

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 155, 5 March 1915, Page 2

WOMEN AND WAR

WOMEN MORE QUICK-WITTED. Women (declares the "Hospital") are proverbially quicker to see things than men, for had the men displayed equal readiness with the women to do their duty in respect to this war, the time of its duration would have been shortened probably by at least twelve months. THE WAR AND THE VOTE. "It is a foregone conclusion," says the Paris correspondent of the "Evening Sun," "that when the war is over the vote will be given the French woman, since, in the absence of the ma a, she will demonstrate what she is able to do." RUSSIAN GIRLS AT THE FRONT. Three Vilna girls, two of them daughters of a colonel and one of a senator, are reported to have stolen to the front disguised as soldiers. The Petrograd correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" saya they have been accepted as volunteers.

ENGLISH WOMAN TURNED BACK. The gendarmes at Dijon stopped or, English girl, aged twenty-four, who fun away to be with an aviator of the detachment from the Pau Aerodrome. She had cut her hair short, and w?.s wearing military aviator's uniform. She will be sent back to her family. ESAVE BELGIAN WOMEN. Long after everybody else had fled in panic, writes the Antwerp correspondent of the "Daily Mail," two brave telephone girls at Lou vain continued to transmit the orders of the Belgian staff directing the safe retreat of their army, while bullets and shell* rained round the building in which j they sat. "Brave as the Belgian men are, they cannot surpass their women," , he .concludes. CANADIAN WIVES. Do Canadian wives count more than their British sisters? According to the "Woman's Journal" (August 22) every man volunteering for active service in the war must bring the written consent of his wife or his services will* not be accepted. "If we are to continue to have such uncivilised, things as wars," it proceeds, "it will be some mitigation if it is recognised that the ownership between husband and wife is to some extent reciprocal and that the wife's consent must be obtained before taking the husband away to make him 'food for powder.' "

KHAKI FASHIONS. The war spirit has already begun to affect our fashions. One of the more daring tradesmen of the London West End has devised a tri-colour tie. A broad dark blue band. a medium broad rod band, and a narrow white band alternative. A competitor along the street pins his faith in the moment to khaki. There are in his window khaki ties of knitted silk, plain silk, and flowered silk, khaki shirts, both in wool and cotton, and some of a silk and cotton mixture. A win flow in the. City itself is given over to "Dreadnought grey." Women 't> veils seem to offer great scope to the war enthusiast. One veil seen recently had just one figuration in the centre of each cheek—a tiny aeroplane.

ITALIAN WOMEN AND THE WAR. A letter on the present war, signed by a h.vge. number of Italian women, lias becj recently published in Borne, in the course of which the following passage occurs:"We wish for absolute neutrality. We mothers, wives, and sisters do not desire a drop of blood to be shed for this unjust cause, a cause, moreover, which is not ours.. But if in the sequence of events the integrity of Italy were to be threatened or compromised like the women of Sparta, we should be the first to inspire enthusiasm in the hearts of our sons, our husbands, and our brothers, and with words of fire we would encourage them, animate them and spur them on to victory."

HOUSEKEEPING HINT 3 AT WARTIME. A correspondent of an English paper writes: "This terrible war i.y such an anxious time for Englishwomen and housewives that every advantage sh uld be taken of the good and bountiful harvest of fruit and vegetables, and also train their daughters to do the same. Much fruit is waste;! and lost from the want of experience and knowledge of the proper nad .successful method, of preserving anP storing the fruit for autumn and winter use." To this it might be added tl).at quantities of cherries were allowed to rot because it was said it was was not worth while picking them; but we should have been glad of them how had they been bottled, as all stone fruit can be, without sugar. The plum and damson season is upon us, and it is to be hoped that we shall

not let a great part of this be wasted. Blackberries, too, will soon be ripe, so now is the season to send the children to gather in the harvest of the bramble bushes, as well as much else that can be utilised, and can be had for the picking. AFTER BATTLE. Women who wept ia the night Weep in the sunlight, too. Roads are red that were white, Skies are grey that were blue. Swollen, as after rain, The brook is silent and slow. Over the trampled grain Lingers the scavenger-crow.