WHAT WE WOMEN THIMK

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 34, 6 March 1931, Page 32

WHAT WE WOMEN THIMK

To the Princess Royal, lately passed for ever beyond the world’s voices, an Hnglish paper pays this tribute: "A shock it is, for the popular regard and affection for this shy and gentle lady are not tobe measured by her share in the limelight of royalty. She stood in all men’s minds for an ancient and noble tradition of woman-hood-the wife and mother who sought no applause, who mixed in none of the traffic and business of State, but who was yet a shining influence on many lives by the sheer force of that example to which Ruskin attributed a power ‘purer than the air of heaven and stronger than the seas of earth.’" Staunch and true and sweet, this great lady was the embodiment of what are -known as the old-fashioned virtues, which yet shine with an enduring radiance, despite pomps and vanities of modernity. : WHEN we were very young it was , the fashion to inculcate admiration for the wisdom and literary genius of John Ruskin. With a smile and a sigh comes memory of that earnest sage’s exhortation to industry and his homily on the dignity of labour. How triste and dull it sounded to the class of golden girls who sat in the sunshine and listened to exposition of the beauty of Ruskin’s prose and Tennyson’s poetry, by the accomplished scholar who in those days at the Girls’ High School controlled the literary destinies of young Otago. Much water has flowed under our bridges since the school hours when we gibed at precept, and dreamed that through all our days our lines would fall in pleasant places. Since then we have acquired much painful knowledge of the world’s processes, and by devious ways have reached conviction that, however hearily the day’s work may bear on body

and spirit, yet individually and colleetively, man and woman, we'd be lost without it. Illusion dies, ambition goes up in smoke; the light of our eyes is filched from us by fate or our own foolish fault; sorrow has its way with us, and the laughter of our fellow-men is as the crackling of thorns under a pot, Then it is that we find weekly and monthly grind a godsend, and dour and downright everydayness of the workday world the one thing that keeps our head above the slough of despond, We grumble, of course, after good old British tradition, we kick against pricks of environment, and wild horses would not drag us to the confessional nor make us admit that work, hard work, is salvation. We end as we began, still scoffing at the dignity of labour. But with a difference! * = = RAD VIOKI BAUM, author of the overwhelmingly successful novel, recently published, entitled "Grand Hotel," and a keen observer and student of the psychology of the eternal feminine, makes reassuring comment anent the modern product. This German writer, it is stated, abjures the pessimists’ belief that woman to-day is losing her femininity, and asserts that, generally speaking, the much-dis-

cussed sex is fair and fascinating as ever it was. The talented authoress, herself extremely attractive looking, quaintly suggests that there is a slight move in the direction of becoming gentlemanly, but no indication whatever of sweet girl graduates or their less intelligent sisters developing unduly masculine yiews and bearing. Which. is all to the good in the opinion of mere man. ‘ es * s {[t is interesting to recall, observes a writer in an English publication, that 80 years ago, when the question of Sabbath observance was raging,

even as occasionally it does now,’ an Anglican clergyman, author of the hymn "Sun of My Soul," though primmest of conservative early Victorians, instituted a Sunday afternoon cricket club, where he and Miss Charlotte Younge, blameless creator of that immaculate hero "The Heir of Redclyffe," went each week and kept the scores for the players. The good vicar’s theory, like that of many of his Ansgliean brethren in these days, was that if you keep your early communion and attend morning service, you are justifled in seeking some worldly recreation during the rest of the day. * * * Victor McLAGLAN, big, brawny, and far from beautiful heavyweight of the films, is one of three brothers, all following the same lucrative profession. The sons of a South African bishop, they are all adepts at boxing, which seems something of an anomaly. Victor is the most famous of the quartet, and weekly draws a small fortune from the coffers of Hollywood. He has had an adventurous career, as one would expect, remembering his tumultuous performance as King of the Khyber Rifles. At the age of 14 he enlisted in the Life Guards, has been a silver miner in Canada, a champion boxer, and was Provost-Gen-eral of Baghdad during the war, After demobilisation he went into pictures,

and found "room at the top" in Hollywood when he appeared in "The Black Watch" and "What Price Glory." His magnificent height and build, great strength, vitality, and suggestion of the bruiser, prove irresistibly attractive to adorers of :the cave-man type of mas--culinity.

‘THE problem of which are the best years in. life is more acute for women than for men because, although love is equally delightful and amusing for both sexes, nature has very unkindly made a man capable of attracting it considerably longer than A woman, Tdke, as a symbol of this, the use of that little word ‘miss.’ How pleased the young girl is when first addressed as ‘madam’; how. enchanted the married woman of several’years’ standing when porters and shop astistants again address her as ‘miss’ ;/and _ how desolated. she is round about the fifty mark when these same shrewd judges call her ‘miss’ again. She knows then that she looks not only elderly, but as though she had never been mar-.. ried. A man has no such intimation of . mortality in hig life, save only one-. that agonising moment when. young men first address him as ‘sir,"" These acute remarks are made in an English periodical by Miss Tennyson Jesse, and are compact of intuition and observation, though not of experience, as the brilliant young novelist herself -is still in the three-decade period. = * * [THE artistic temperament, prone to. seize the opportunity as it flies, hag been, in the language of the iat, raising Cain once more, A prima" donna refused to sing to her impatient audience at Nice Opera House. because the management failed to perfume the entire theatre with mimosa. What happens, asks a contemporary, when Carmen demands tuberose and Marguerite insists on lily of the valley? What if the taxpayer went mad at the sight of the income-tax form, and refused to pay a penny because the demand was not printed on his favourite notepaper?. And how good it would be if politicians refused to talk any more’ because the House was not perfumed with honesty ! I ponder poor Strephon’s dismay if hauteur of Chloe can only be dissipated with pints of Parisian pot-pourri; and father’s bewilderment when seventeen-year-old hope of suburbia kicks and scratches because birthday bath-salts are scented-:svith’ eau de cologne instead of chypre; i J[NDIVIDUALLY women have , won high honours in 1930, and collec--tively they have pulled better to gether than they have ever-done. The year has seen the beginning of the British Federation of Business and Professional Women, while the International Federation was formed aft Geneva. The women of fifteen countries were represented at the inaugural meeting, and they will in future exchange hospitality and make business opportunities for each other,

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face. As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done.

Joseph

Campbell