BETTY'S DIARY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 55, 12 July 1940, Page 5

BETTY'S DIARY

The Editor, "The Listener," Sir,-I sympathise with " £250 a Year," whose criticism was perfectly legitimate and in my opinion, quite reasonable. I myself find Betty’s Diary mildly interesting, faintly amusing, but I can well appreciate how irritating to the average New Zealand housewife the futile kind of existence-the one child, maid, cocktail, bridge party life depicted by "Betty"-must be. " Betty’s" private life is her own, of course, and it seemed to me that the complaint of " £250 a Year" was really directed against the Editor, who allows that life to be flaunted in the faces of hard-working wives and mothers, Betty’s jibe that a dry martini occasionally might help towards a more charitable outlook shows definite lack of understanding-firstly, because charity that has to be stimulated by spirits is apt to become mere maudlin, insincere sentiment, and secondly, because it would be impossible for " £250 a Year" to indulge in even occasional martinis except at the

expense of her children’s needs. Personally, I ‘ deplore the cocktail canker that is gnawing at the core of our national life, and regret that a national paper like The Listener should be a party to persuading the young "Bill-Jims" of our nation that it is a natural concomitant of living. Yours, etc.,

J.

B.

Kawakawa, June 24, 1940,

The Editor, "The Listener." Sir-I go one further than "£250 a Year." I have given up reading Betty’s Diary. The irritation was unendurable, I can conceive of no duller life than that of a woman with only one child who has a servant. How does she fill her waking hours? What joy does she give or receive? No wonder " £250 a Year" was irritated. I thank her sincerely for expressing herself so frankly. Yours. etc..

£500 A YEAR

Gisborne, June 30, 1940.