MARRIED MEN'S WAR SERVICE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 37, 13 February 1943, Page 4

MARRIED MEN'S WAR SERVICE

All this complaining by young mothers whose husbands have just started to do what thousands of our single and many married men have been engaged in for periods of up to over three years makes one wonder at the lack of stamina shown and conjecture as to its cause. New Zealand mothers of former generations did not moan over their husbands' temporary absence, but stood up to their task single-handed and unafraid, glad of a chance to show their mettle. This is still very much a pioneer country with huge jobs to be done, even in peace-time, in remote and inaccessible places where men in several walks of life work and live for months away from home but we have yet to hear their wives crying out over their loneliness and inability to run a home and a small family. Moreover, New Zealand has endured three wars before this one— the first on its own soil, and our grandmothers, living cheerily and bravely in tents and dugouts witli the terror-striking war dance within hearing, and their natural protectors often far away, did not flinch from women's essential job of home-making and child-rearing. To put it bluntly at a time when the supply of manpower means our very life as a free people, ablebodied men of military age cannot surely be spared to wash the family dishes and pin napkins. WAHINE.