CLOP, CLOP CLOP!

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 293, 8 December 1923, Page 15

CLOP, CLOP CLOP!

* JAPAN'S NEW QUEUE. TRAGIC .-.j>"D RIDICULOUS. flop. rlop. clop! The din of miles of wooden shoes at he relief depots is slowly dwindling, j "hese days nobody wants. , But there is another kind of queue Towing steadily bigger and noisier in fokyo now. It is a quelle of anxious women and rirls, riling up to busy little' bureaus .nd registering their names with flurried lerks. and clop-hopping away desperite with hope. They want husbands. This is one of the earthquake effects hat will probably adjust itself in a few Tionths. But just now it is acute, rhousai.ds of women have lost their rusbands. and thousands of girls have ost all the friends and relatives who ised to keep them. Here is a pathetic little widow of 40. with a baby on her back. She is thin md haggard, but she bows low to the •lerk and tells him quickly how earnest die is. Next to her is a girl of IS. fresh and -railing, thickly powdered—though, honestly, not quite so thickly as some Australian girls—and looking generally as if she ought to be at school. These are the two extremes, but somehow they give a truthful impression of the whole thing—it is at once tragic and ridiculous.