GOOD ACTRESSES

Taranaki Daily News, 26 July 1919, Page 12

GOOD ACTRESSES

THE PUZZLING- FRAULEIN. There are quite a number A returned soldiers in New Zealand who had an experience of garrison life in Cologne, Mulheim, and other Rhine towns, who bear glowing testimony to the amiability of the German women. •'When we first got into Cologne," said one young commissioned officn" to a Dominion reporter, "the Germans, welldressed and decently groomed, simply did not see us at all. They looked right thro-jgh us, as if wo weren't there at all, or else gave a haughty stare, as though relenting our intrusion on the sacred, soil of the Fatherland.' But the women were all the other way. Indeed, it seemed to me that they were too sweet altogether—as though, somehow or other, they had been instructed to treat us decentiy. Even now I can't tell if they were acting or tot, and I know that a lot of the boys simply swear by the German girls because of tho way they were treated during the occupation. I don't know whether it is known, but several New Zealanders married German girls in Cologne. How they are going to bring them out here, pr whether they will ever be allowed to do so I don't know, but the marriages were the real thing nil right At .the railway station there were crowds of weeping Germans girls as each section of the New Zealanders left for Blighty. If they were not gemrno, I take off my hat to them as actresses!

"Yet (lest we forget) was it not the women o f Cologne, who, when the British prisoners of war were filthy, starving, and almost mad with thirst, brought glasses brimming witJi water to the sides of the railway trucks, and after tantalising the poor fellows by holding the glasses just a few inches beyond their reach, dashed th» water on the floor of the platform, rather than give them a drop to ease the awful aching of their parched throats—and plorind in the torturo so inflicted? Truly, Fraulcin is a good actress!"