TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24,1916. SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, 24 October 1916, Page 4

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24,1916. SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

An observant English writer says that among the very many things which the war is bringing to a head is the question of the relations of the sexes. If women work, and meet man on his own ground as a worker, can they expect ~to be treated with the implicit deference and the explicit respect accorded to them while they were yet non-workers? This is one of the questions of the day in England, though it has long since been answered in the affirmative by everyday practice in our own oversea, dominions.. Still, as a social study, it is at once interesting and instructive to notice how the subject fares in England. As to women working, the war has settled this on a scale never before dreamt of, for, paid or unpaid, every woman worth her salt now works in England, be it only at housework that she must do herself because she can no longer afford servants. This state .of things has always been more or less common in the colonies, and as we have said, the prevailing attitude of colonial men towards women is one of consistent courtesy. However, in Britain this question, of courtesy is at the moment of real importance to men whose daughters and nieces are in the War Office, or in hospitals, or in munition factories, | and whose wives and sisters are no less ' busy on unrenmnerated but responsible duties. But apparently the Genius of Good Sense is successfully leavening the lump of circumstance, for we are assured that, after many false starts, young women appear to have hit on a sensible .mean. They indignantly decline to be the "pretty darlings" of the days of John Leech; on the other hand, the mannish ideal of the late Mrs Bloomer and the epicene , horror of the ill-dressed, short-haired, aggressive spinster are both out of favor. The young woman of to-day likes to look her best; but she likes also to be capable, active, and self-supporting. One may gather from a stroll through London streets that there are still plenty of young women about who have not developed beyond the John Leech stage, though they have lost ■ the retiring modesty which was the "pretty darling's" best endowment. The writer somewhat severely remarks, however, that such young women hard-

ly count in the world to-day, and that they may be left to • wither on the stalk, or to provide ..for the unhappiness of anyone foolish enough to have dealings with them. But no doubt this severity is deserved, for lisping, mincing, prattling parasites, however pretty, are out of place in these strenuous times, and are perhaps mere cumberers of the ground—social weedlings—at all times. It is, at least, reassuring to know t!hat, notwithstanding the new conditions, women generally in England have no intention of forgoing their sex's claim to the admiration of > men, though they are refusing to be treated as dolls or toys. People of the older generation in England hope that this may not lead to the neglect of such social graces as the raising of the hat, the opening of the door, or generally giving social precedence to the sex; and, judging by experience in the colonies, we should say that there is no ground for, grave misgivings in this matter. There is, of in this connectionj all the less cause for alarm becatise Courtesy £o women is some* thing more than an acquired grace. '- It has a long and honorable ancestry. However degraded and attenuated by 'the lapse of time, it springs from the woman-worship of the age of chivalry, which, in its extravagant way, faithfully expressed the discovery of a spiritual quality in women denied to men. And the recognition of this is still a property of the masculine consciousness, so dat the modern man who is not a boor cannot help being courteous to women, and even when Ihe thinks he is expressing compassion I for their physical weakness, he is in reality doing homage to what is spiritual in their natures, in the spirit of the knights of yore. "Civilisation requires, in fact, that this traditional courtesy should never come to an end. Its practice by men or acceptance by women need not bar the growth of the new franker and fuller comradeship between the sexes, hut should be a guarantee of safety as well a« suavity in. that comradeship, especially if the courtesy is not affected or merely formal, but an expression of the moral consciousness that deference is due to women as the possessors of spiritual qualities which make for a fairly equitable balance between conservatism and progress in the social life of the world.