BOYS ON FARMS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 6 January 1936, Page 8

BOYS ON FARMS

(To the Editor) * Sir, —“Yet Another Mother” in last night’s paper seems to think that because a farmer happens to be a returned soldior we mothers should give him our 'sons as a thank offering for “services : rendered” to do with as he thinks fit on I his “so precious farm.” We will suppose that the “Returned Soldier Farmer” did get as far as the trenches, did fight not only for “Mother,” but his own manhood and country. What was “Mother” doing at that time? Perhaps she, too, was doing her bit in the “Danger Zone,” caring for the sick and wounded, repairing the ravages of war, 1 too, by giving to a stricken nation more I sons, sons perhaps of men who never returned and whose only reward for “services rendered” is a grave “In Flanders’ Fields,” not a farm. And just as these “Farms” represent to a “Returned Soldier” a nation’s gratitude, our sons, perhaps, are a living reminder of an even greater sacrifice. All the post-war labour a “Returned Soldier” lavishes on his farm, “Mother” perhaps has lavished a million times more on her son, and is this her postwar years of care and love to be destroyed by any man, be he a returned soldier or not? In counting the cost of war to many “Mothers” you little think of the even greater sacrifices she may have made; yes, even greater than the “Returned Soldier Farmer” and to think so much of “her so precious son far from “disgusts” her so many friends. I am, etc., “ANOTHER FARMER’S BOY’S MOTHER,” I