WOMEN AND COURAGE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 72, 8 November 1940, Page 4

WOMEN AND COURAGE

Sir,-It is a strange thing that it should be considered necessary for anyone to vindicate women’s courage-one of their most outstanding virtues. I do not particularly remember " Thid’s" letter, but if he wrote impugning the courage of women he deserves all Jean Boswell gave him in your issue of October 13-19 "and then some." Women are remarkable for their courage, certainly not for the want of it. Whoever heard of a mother leaving her children to save herself, of nurses deserting their patients in a bombed hospital, of women passengers panicking in any one of the frightful shipwrecks and disasters of modern times? I seem to have read quite recently of a torpedoed steamer, some children, and a woman who did not lack courage. Women may be

more easily frightened than some men but that has nothing to do with it-they will face up to anything when the occasion demands it. For that matter they are afraid of mice-or pretend they are-yet I have seen a woman catch a large fierce rat with her bare hands. Elephants also are terrified of mice but do not mind tigers. "Thid" might get a different angle on his subject by reading a little history, the Indian Mutiny for example. I doubt whether we average men have as much courage as the average woman. I have known many men who proved far below 100%. A man who shows conspicuous courage has. his brisket plastered with medals and ribbons; not so women — perhaps because their courage is taken for granted. _No, sir, that cat won’t fight. The myth about women’s want of courage, if it ever existed, has been blown out long ago.

NOT VERY BRAVE

(Te Araroa),