A WOMEN’S CAUSTIC LETTER.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 May 1918, Page 3

A WOMEN’S CAUSTIC LETTER.

An American woman whoso heart is very much in tho war, writing to a friend in Auckland, is very excited about the people about her who do not seem to take much interest in the war. “ Actually these very days when the freedom of the race is in the balance I have men acquaintances who first read the sporting headlines (‘sporting’ underlined), then the comics, and gradually work round to the war news to read an editorial would bore the life out of them, and to mention 8010 Pasha or Roger Casement is to speak in a foreign brogue! I had a chap ask me only a few weeks ago who 8010 was; and after about two years of a war a woman asked me on which side the Scotch were) fighting!” This is very regrettable, but perhaps, she will become more tolerant as the war goes on. Every country has these types. It was not an American but a New Zealander who, on being told that Kitchener was dead, said: ‘‘By jove, is he?—Going to the races to-day?” As for knowledge of figures like 8010 and Casement, I’d undertake without going beyond Queen Street on a fine afternoon, to find many people who couldn’t tell you who B'olo was. Remember the story of the old Frenchman discovered after the Napoleonic wars in a forest near Paris, who had never hoard of Napoleon. There is one consolation, the war has made many pco- , pie taken an interest in history, geoi graphy, and politics who took no interest in them before. As a dear lady said. “This war teaches me so much. Before the war I used to think Dunkirk was a town in Scotland, and now | I know that it is one of the German 1 naval bases.”