TO-DAY'S TRENDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 225, 23 September 1938, Page 11

TO-DAY'S TRENDS.

WOMEN ALL BLACKS.

MARKS OF A NEW WORLD.

NEW ZEA&AND GROWING- UP.

The day when New Zealand would have its women All Blacks in the field of sport was envisaged last night by Mr. D. M. Kae, principal of the Auckland Teachers' Training College, when he spoke at the annual dinner of the New Zealand division, of the Institute of Incorporated Secretaries of Australia and New Zealand. Mr. Kae saw this trend as a characteristic of the "brave new world'' which was coming into being. It was this new world that he made the subject of an address which covered a wide range of human interests. "As we look at our world we find a new place being occupied by our womenfolk," Mr. Rao declared. "We shall have to double our playing fields; we shall have our women All Blacks in basketball, hockey, cricket. "W onian has won for herself a new place as an equal partner, and has proved that she can still bo competent in the home and yet take an active part' in the economic, political and social life of the .community."

Another observation made by Mr. Kae was that New Zealand now found itself a nation with new responsibilities and duties in the British Commonwealth of Xntions, expected to speak for New Zealand and expected to stand on it 6 own feet, lint it had yet to realise the true significance of the* fact that it had grown up. "AVe have felt proud to call England 'Home' and to regard ourselves as more Knglish than the Knglish," lie s<iid, "but we shall best serve the Commonwealth of Nations and Britain if we realise our new position as a responsible unit of the Kinpire. Perhaps one might say our main mark is civic complacency and a desire to imitate, rather than to initiate."

Of the present ape in jreneral, Mr. Rae Haul: ''We discover with something 0 f a shock that our own English-speaking world philosophy of democratic Government is being called into question in hurope to-day. The lamps of democracy are going out one bv one. . 10-day we are ju*t rewlisinp that democracy must march with the times and nght for its life, and be prepared to make its sacrifices as in the past. "We realise very truly that history will have nothing but scorn for us if we allow the great dictatorships to overrun without challenge those smaller nations where democracy is fighting for its life—if we become so weak that the voice „f the Mother of Parliaments will not still command respect injiurope or for that matter, in Asia." Democracy would not'hold its place before dictatorships, with their ant-like fliciency, if it was shoddv, disorderly undisciplined, physically unfit, without n!fv C nf lT without a of dig- ■ of l«boiir, without enthusiasm or Hitler 1 "A, PUr T C f ° Up,Wld He ide «l»H'tler, Mussolini and the rest of the dictators had ridden to power on the promise to g.ve social security, a cau£ o i\e or die for, the emotion of bea "ta"e o°f * and the that felt thatnn e ilT e T nCy e * iSte<L Mr - Rae ;t. |r jsrarssv »o U w" iiZ the » »'<