APPEAL TO WOMEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 212, 16 July 1943, Page 3

APPEAL TO WOMEN

»ir,- Your description of the appeal made by the leaders of the Church to the women of New Zealand as "pathetic" was apt. It was pathetic because it ignored the fact that the looseness it deplored is not a thing isolated in itself, but is an essential part of the world chaos in which we find ourselves. War and sexual promiscuity are complementary results of an attitude of mind which places national and financial interests above the interests of individual human beings. To close one's eyes to the attitude of mind which causes stich results, and then to deplore one while openly or tacitly condoning the other, is surely so irrational as to be "pathetic." They are twin fruit of the same rotten tree, and while the tree stands, the fruit will be tainted. When women see the Church fighting without fear and without ceasing against all the greed in high places, all the woolly and emotional thinking, all the selfishness and lust for power that lead to war, then an appeal to them from it may carry some weight. At present, it carries little, or none at

all:

SAPPHO

(Ngunguru),

Sir,-As a veteran of two wars, I was interested in the letter by your correspondent "Audax II.," especially his remark that "In normal times most people have the expectation that they will live long enough to satisfy it" (their sex-appetite). Then he goes on to say "but these are not normal times."

As a soldier who has seen much active service, this is a new one on me, To suggest that those who live dangerously think they must crowd all this kind of thing into their lives at every opportunity is nonsense. How little he knows the mind of the average soldier. Perhaps the war would never have been started if the Germans had not thought that the ideals and ideas of "Audax II." were the British ones in general,

AUDACIOUS XX

(Carterton).

Sir-yYour correspondent "Audax II" says (in effect), that "life" is sensual (ie. sexual) indulgence, and fidelity (in man or woman), is just biding one’s time. Does he also think that priests and nuns sooner or later break their vows, and that the curate who has to wait too long for a better living steals the bishop’s spoons? It would be no more beastly to

think such things than to suppose that the last thought of the young pilot ss he crashes to earth is the women he has missed. Let me tell him (as the lucky, or unlucky, survivor of 12 pilots who left New Zealand more than three years ago), that his conception of a "young AIR FORCE man" is as near to the reality as is the conduct of the dogs in the street to the conduct of the men

and women who pass them bv.

PER

ARDUA AD ASTRA

(Eastbourne),