A GRAVE PROBLEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 June 1943, Page 2

A GRAVE PROBLEM

CHURCH LEADERS APPEAL SOLDIERS’ WIVES AND FIANCEES. BROKEN ENGAGEMENTS AND UNFAITHFULNESS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, June 13. A statement has been issued by Archbishop West-Watson, Anglican Primate of New Zealand, Archbishop O’Shea, Catholic Metropolitan of New Zealand,® the Rev. J. G. Laughton, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, the Rev. C. H. Olds, president of the New Zealand Methodist Conference, the Rev. F. A. Parry, president of the New Zealand Baptist Union, and the Ju, Rev. J. Gordon Smith, chairman of the NewJjp Zealand Congregational Union, in the courser of which it is stated: — “Official information has been received by us of a matter which is causing grave concern to the chaplains of one of our divisions on active service, A number of men are receiving letters from New Zealand telling of broken engagements and unfaithfulness among married women whose husbands are with the forces. One padre alone was handling 15 cases, and there must be many which the padres do not hear about at all. Naturally, the men concerned are distressed and disturbed. “We desire therefore to make a most earnest appeal to al girls engaged to soldiers on active service and to all wives of such soldiers to remember that their men are enduring danger, fatigue and discomfort on behalf of all of us. One of their greatest supports is the thought of. their loved ones at home, their pride in protecting them and their hope of cheering letters from them. Bad news from home and a feeling of impotence to intervene might easily be responsible for many a nervous collapse. BETRAYAL OF MEN. “It is hard to believe that any of our women could be guilty of cruelty and the treachery of betraying the very men who are risking their lives to protect them. We know well that the break-up of homes due to the calling-up of husbands and fathers has made life very difficult for many a wife, but how many wives could truly say that their hardships are as great as those which their absent husbands are called to bear? Soldiers' wives and fiancees have it in their power by their faithful courage to send their men into battle gallant and high-heart-ed or to break their morale by callousness and forgetfulness. “Surely we do not need to remind our womenfolk that, the campaign is being lost or won not only in the Middle East or the Pacific, but also in the town and countryside of New Zealand, not only by the men on service abroad but by the women at home, and this is not all. Every home broken up by heartlessness and disloyalty is going to prove a defective part in the; new order which we hope to build after the war. It is going to let the building down.-.i • A BAD FOUNDATION. “What kind of foundation for a better order is one who can write to her husband that she does not love him any more and will not live with him any more, that she wants a divorce, and that if he stops her pay she will put the children in a home and go out to work? Is this the way we want the children of our nation trained up who are to bear the burdens of citizenship 20 and 30 years hence? And what are we to say of men who take advantage of women who are betrothed to men far away at the front or women who are feeling the loneliness of long separation from their husbands? These are the kind of. people who are poison in the life blood of any community, men who are light-heartedly wrecking those very ideals which their brothers at the front are fighting to maintain.”