CASE OF THE GIRLS

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 28, 1 February 1919, Page 10

CASE OF THE GIRLS

MUNITION WORKERS FREE

SHOULD THEY EMKSU.'TE?

" But what will become of all these girls? Are they troubled about their future?" The question is dealt with by Mary Binstead, a well-known writer in the Daily Chronicle.

My friend smiled. She comes from what was four years ago a sleepy country town. To-day it is a vast munition area But the army of giris employed will not be needed much longer.

"I think most of the girls are quite reconciled to the munition works closing down," she said. "You see, so many of them intend to go overseas. Some of them as wives of our colonial soldiers, many of them in search of work and homes." '

" And adventure;" I murmured beneath my breath. Well, and why shouldn't they go abroad in search of all three-? I like to think of these search parties of British lasses who have toiled to save the Empire, faring forth into the furthest corners of that Empire, potential home makers for the men who at the Motherland's call raced across the world to help in the great work of her salvation. We must not grudge' our best and brightest"girls to those far-distant lands which yet are as tally England as our own dearly loved island. ■ '■ .. The girls don't wocry. They are preparing .to emigrate in the spirit one would expect of British women, full of cheerful anticipation and the spirit of adventure. Small fear of their not making good m these new worlds. There will be difficulties to be faced abroad, as there have been difficulties at home, especially in the case of those women who'are not leaving England as soldiers' brides, whose futures ate as yet undiscovered; but, as the girls themselves would1 say, "Difficulties were made to be overcome." THE COURAGE OF YOOTH. Courage is natural to the young, thrilling with sense of adventure. But there must be many, no longer young, who axe contemplating the flitting of the nestlings from home and homeland with misgiving' and heartache. Parente are rarely imbued with, much of the spirit.of adventure, especially where their daughters are cbnoerrted, and many case they have seen enough of adventure during the past four years to last them for the rest of their lives. They wonder who will " mother" these daughters in new and untried lands j - how shall the greatest of all influences, home influence, reach across the waste of waters? They know the dangers ■which beset healthy and high-spirited young women placed in fresh surroundings very far away. And then they remember the boys who discovered "home" on the battlefields wherever there was to be found a V.M.C.A. hut. If only these parents could count on some similar support for these their children, setting forth so gaily in of new and wonderful -worlds, what a burden would be lifted from them! '■ Churches and chapels should surely set to work at once to emulate the V.M.C.A. in provision of social organisations, broad-minded, yet permeated with the tone religions spirit, which will bring1 "home" to thoe giris of ours in distant lands jnflt as sorely as the huts spelt home to the boys in the trenches.