APPEAL TO WOMEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 210, 2 July 1943, Page 3

APPEAL TO WOMEN

»ir-Qualifed congratulations on your leader "Appeal to Women." It is one of the most courageous statements on the subject I have read-but it still isn't courageous enough. It still does not recognise sufficiently the distinction between normal times and abnormal (i.e. war) times. In normal times, fidelity and chastity are no great hardship to the average person; husbands can be separated from their wives and wives from their husbands for long periods without succumbing to temptation. In normal times, it is absurd to suggest that sex is an appetite which must willy-nilly be satisfied-because in normal times, most people have the expectation that they will live long enough to satisfy it normally. But these times are not normal. While it is true that even in war the great majority of separated husbands and wives and separated sweethearts have enough faith and enough love to retain their fidelity, I don’t think that even you take sufficiently into account something which the majority of public pronouncements completely ignore-the effect which the unnatural wartime conditions of excitement, instability and doubt about survival have on many young people. I don’t want to pick on any one section as against another, but just for example, when I hear on the radio time after time that "35 of our aircraft are missing" (the numbers vary, but the theme is the same), I can forgive-indeed I can almost excuse — any young Air Force man who decides to take a fling at life while he can. You say: "We surrender most of the ground we have ever won as civilised beings when we argue that men and women separated by circumstances must necessarily consort with other men and women." But sir, we surrendered most of that ground when we committed ourselves to waging total war. Perhaps on the home front we are just beginning to realise what "total" involvee

AUDAX II

(Wellington)