A NEW ZEALANDER IN NEW YORK

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 154, 27 December 1912, Page 7

A NEW ZEALANDER IN NEW YORK

" - '^ — — WOMEN AND WOMEN'S CLUBS. -Madame Betty Brooke, the well-known songstress and lecturer, leaves this evening for Melbourne. Madame Brooke left America last July, after spending some six months iti New York, and for the last month Of so has been staying m Chrietchurch. During her long stay in New York Madame Brooke sang and spoke and' lectured before the ladles of some hundred and one clubs and" organisations, and as a result of the experience, she informed a Post representative, she is firmly convinced that what the New Zealand Government need In America ib a lady speaker, who will address her remarks exclusively to women. "It is no use opening a tourist office; women won't go there, and it is the women you want to get," she added, "I did 4iot speak as an official of the Government,' but simply as a private person, and wherever possible I spoke on the beauties of New Zealand and* its attractiveness from a tourist point of view." ' Club life appears to be a great feature among the women of New York, and it in interesting to hear that there is one old-established clttb— -the Soroflis — described by Madame Brooke as the finest women's club in the world, where no scandal is allowed to be talked ! Madame Brooke was greatly interested in the institution known as the Imperial Order of Daughters of Empire, devised for the purpose of binding together British women who go to America and to retain their i'egard for the Empire. The o«der now consists of some 2000 members, distributed among twenty-five chapters, or branches, and Madame Brooke had the distinction of being Regent of the Southern Cross branch a director of the Executive Council of the main body. The ultimate aim of the order is to found a home for aged Britishers— men and women—- and the funds are accumulating rapidly. The president of the order is Mrs. Elliott Longstaff, and Mrs. Brice (wife of the Right Hon. James Brice, formerh British Ambassador to the United States) is vice-president. Ih conclusion, Madame Brooke had a few words to say about women's clubs in New Zealand. They are aot, sho said, run on a sufficiently broad-minded basis. Here the well-to-do women take too prominent a part. In America they provide the funds and the influence, ' ahd those not so well off get all the benefit and are encouraged to take a leading part in the management. i — ;