PLACE AUX DAMES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 108, 22 April 1912, Page 3

PLACE AUX DAMES.

William by Divine Right. The tactless little piece of flattery th-’ Kaiser allowed himself to indulge in with regard to the cleverness of the Italian people brings hack old times again, when his blunders of speech and pen were of tenor reported. The prompt denial last week makes one rather wond -r what happened to the editor of ths paper in which the remark was first reported, remembering the case of a Hamburg editor who some years ago spok? disrespectfully of the all-powerful, printing at the. same time some racy accounts of the King of Belgium’s escapades. The paper had scarcely reached Beilin when a suit of lese-majeste was brought by the Public Prosecutor, and the newspaper man, who was not given a chance to prove his assertions, got ten months. One of the most entertaining stories told of the Kaiser is of t!ii? dedication of a number of Bibles for a. new. Berlin garrison church. He inscribed them as follows: —“I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be My people. Ye shall walk in all the Wavs which I have commanded you. Without Me ye can do nothing.” He signed each sentence, “ Wilhelm. Imperator Rex,’’ and omitted quotation marks, as well as book, c hapter, and vers? by which to indicate the origin of the phrases. “ They shall stand by themselves as expressions of my royal will,” he said. Ths New Profession.

There was a time when “ a mother’s lore ” was supposed to fill all the needs, physical and spiritual, of a child; when “ a mother’s instinct ” taught her what was best to do for her child in all circumstances. There has bean a sort of universal awakening on a great many points during the last ten or twenty years, and among other innovations foi the good of humanity, the Government or society-supported trained nurse has arisen, who will go into the homes an.l instruct inexperienced mothers in the proper care of their offspring. There is a drawback often fotino in this scheme (quoted continually hi filir own town), and that is that it is depriving the mother of one more duty, robbing her of a little more responsibility. Is it just or wise to consider the welfare of the child at the expense of the parents’ character? There can he no possible’ question about the duty df the State to the child : but does it owe no duty to the parent, too? We cannot afford to lose one of those qualities which made our grandmothers and mothers the flue pioneer women they were, and each maternal duty of which the mother is relieved robs her of some of that strength which eoines from service and sacrifice. At the same time it is urgently necessary to strengthen the future population of this young country, and that can only be done in two wavs ; either by bringing up our girls with the obje"t of becoming good wives and mothers, training them thoroughly for what the Americans have called the “ new profession,” or by showing them, after they have become mothers, ti e proper way to’care for their children. The former method of instruction mu.-t eventually be introduced into our educational system, but failing that, for the present, we may be thankful that, in our own town, as well as in a fe-v others, some trouble is being taken to teach young mothers now the best way to give to the State healthy and worthy future citizens. Perhaps some of us who are given to railing- against the “ pauperising of the people,” and insisting that the nurse scheme makes neglectful mothers, do not properly realise that the root of the whole system is the education of the mothers. A Man-made World.

There is something curiously pathetic about the suggestion of the English suffragists to abandon hats and boycot man-milliners. It is such a futile hammering against the walls of a “ manmade world, "as Mrs. Gilman calls it. It might be an easy matter to boycot a man-milliner if enough women could be found to possess such disregard for a new spring hat; but what about the man-dressmaker, the man-bootmaker, the man-manufacturer of calicoes and tweeds, velvets, and silks? There > > rot an article of woman’s dress that does not, in one stags or another, owe its existence to man, and the majority cf our garments are not only almost entirely man-made, but are planned and designed by man. There may be a ?;’>v innocent people who imagine that women create the fashions. We,are often contemptuously called “ creatures of fashion,” and so we may be, but we are very, very rarely the creators of fashion. Styles change with every varying season, not because women are longing foi novelty, but because the manufacturers are hungry for profits. If the clothes which are bought in one year by women were all worn out by their buyers before others were-purchased, wo should probably hear of bankruptcy and fadtire among a host of manufacturers, and many shop windows would bear the legend, “To let.” And when a few thousand women propose to go hatless as a protest against man-milliners, it is like putting out a single hand to held back the incoming tide. Throe Books.

A book by Mrs. John Lane, “ The Talk of the Town.” was reviewed with such a flourish of trumpets in many — what ought to be —reliable English papers, that one seized it the moment it appeared with the feeling that “nt last,” etc. After the first two or three pages of the first article, upon clothes and their tyranny, the disappointment began, and the other chapters were waded through in a sort of desperate attempt to find at least a few bright phrases, or one or two catchy epigrams for .future use. One is forced to fen: that perhaps, after all, Mr. Arnold Bennett is right, that women have > o “ stvle,” no real ability for writin *. The humour of Mrs. John Lane wou’d no doubt be a godsend to the hostess <>l a dull dinner partv. or she would probably be the “ life and soul ” of anv social gathering luckv enough to count her of their number, but. written down her id’as are tiring, futile, and as f;” from being either interesting or amu.; ing as anything could well be. Tin n there is another book which most of vs have read. “The Moneymoon.” by the “Broad Highway” man. A nice, clean little story, suitable for any schoolgi I in her teens, but really rather waste <f time for grown-ups. One would like verv much to be sure that Jeffery F:vr><—> is not a woman—his extraordinnw mistakes in speaking of men’s habii - and clothing are so very frequent. See the very first conversation with his butler, for instance : the hero lights nine at the top of a page, and asks for "igarettes presumably two .minutelate’'. The whole stvle is Ellen 1 borne.

■'■oft Fowic-like io a <b'g''eo, but >omteds on° of no hitherto known ma’ 1 - writer. “ Earth.” by Muriel Hine, is well worth reading, a novel well constructed, very human, ami altogethc l abo”o the a.ve’”’go: also distinctly’ fm grown-vps. and not for scliooolgiids ;i> their teens.