RETURN OF THE "NUT."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 September 1918, Page 5

RETURN OF THE "NUT."

' 'Before tie war a familiar type of well-dressed, tight-waisted, silk-socked,. and brogue-shod young man. was popularly known as a 'nut.' The ; name was given," says the Daily Mail, "half in admiration, half in derision. "The summer, of 1914 was the very heyday of the 'nuts.'-; They ripened to full-glory in that' year■ when every 'nut' drove his own motor-car or rode a high-velocity motor-cycle. * "Then, out of that summer sky, the tocsin boomed, and, like a mirage, the pageant of the 'nuts' faded into a monotone of khaki. We know where the 'nuts' have been since then and what they have done, on the land, on the water, under the water, and in the aii-. .

"Thousands of them, in the sweet of youth, have given their lives for us as gaily as ever they drove down the Portsmouth road, arid far more casually than ever they gave their tailors an order. Thousands of calm, young men, whose chiefest preoccupation, was believed to be the set of a necktie, have proved themselves more glorious than the Paladins of old in a . war whose horrors the Paladins could not have imagined in a nightmare. "We have missed the 'nut, r and in his absence we have forgiven him. with a smile or a sigh, for all his gay and careless extravagances, which he has redeemed with so much quiet heroism. Now the number of silverbadged young men is increasing, and the 'niit' is reappearing. No one smiles' now at the careful color-scheme of his handkerchiefs, his socks, and his ties or resents his dandyisms. For in the lapel of his coat shines his guerdon? arid he lights up our world again."