The MANAWATU DAILY Times WEDNESDAY, MAECH 18, 1938. Women and War

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 65, 18 March 1936, Page 4

The MANAWATU DAILY Times WEDNESDAY, MAECH 18, 1938. Women and War

An unusual attitude to war is expressed by Margery South in the Manchester Guardian. The ordinary citizen, she says, raised no protest against war as a means of settling disputes between nations until the last war, which involved civilians as well as the .Regular Army. Men who had never thought about war before were aroused to its horrors, women who had borne complacently the loss of other women’s husbands and sons were shaken out of their apathy by the threatened loss, of their own. The threat of bombing from the air, the vivid descriptions of the horrors of poison gas, the threat'to civilian life and property are in themselves a sufficient guarantee that the agitation against war will continue. it is found possible to make international agreements that air bombing shall cease, the civilian interest in war will tend to decrease, though should war break out no pacts will guarantee that there will actually be no bombing from the air. But why should the civilian population be exempt from the horrors of war » Why should women assume that men who take the financial responsibility of their wives and children in peace time should also suffer all the hardships and dangers in wartime ? Is it to be allowed as right that boys separated from the comforts and loving protection of home life should be wounded or killed while their sisters are immune ? Am I to go through the next war, as I did the last, in comparative security, able to see the progress of the war in comfort and safety from the plush scats of a cinema ? If there is another war, women must take equal responsibility with men, must be ready to share the same dangers. As for the children and the aged, it is easy to be sentimental, but I reserve my passionate pity for the men of sufficient age and vigour to realise the dangers before them, and therefore to die a hundred deaths before a bullet or shell stops their tortured imaginings for ever. “Women and children first” is the chivalrous cry of manhood. Women must concentrate on something more than this or they demonstrate their inferiority.