Appeal to Women
last week by the leaders of the Churches was one of the most pathetic documents of the whole war. War has meant broken homes since the beginning of history, and the problem necessarily increases with the remoteness of the battlefield. Whether we realise it therefore or shut our eyes, it has put a bigger strain on the women and girls of New Zealand during our two world Campaigns than on those whose men have done their fighting nearer home. For reasons also with which everybody is familiar, the strain has increased during the last twelve months. The facts are so clear, so widely recognised, and so inescapable, that with the single exception of this statement by Church leaders almost no public reference to them has ever been made. No one has had the courage to speak about them, .or feel anything like confidence that speaking would do any good. And yet there is one obvious comment that it is dangerous cowardice not to make. The spokesmen of the Churches made it from their angle when they denied that war "brings a moratorium in decency and honour." We do not need to be moralists or puritans to know that it can be put more bluntly than that. It is crude, vulgar, decadent, and unclean to suppose that there is no . e longer such a virtue as restraint; that men and women separated by circumstances must _ necessarily consort with other men and women; and that fidelity is old-fashioned nonsense. We surrender most of the ground we have ever won as civilised beings when we argue like that, and a good deal of the ground we are again fighting for. We reduce human life to a slightly higher than animal level of eating, drinking, and mating, and make as good men and women of those who snatch and grab as of those who have achieved manners and delicacy and self-denial. The bluest, primmest, most inhibited, and most disfigured of the spiritual survivors of Victorianism is a more lovely spectacle than the woman (or man) who does not know what fidelity is. appeal issued to women
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 209, 25 June 1943, Page 3
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355Appeal to Women New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 209, 25 June 1943, Page 3
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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