THE FEMININE TOUCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16300, 5 August 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FEMININE TOUCH.

POLITICS AND BEAUTY.

BT FRANK MORTON,

Vv HEN one speaks of the feminine touch, one is not necessarily speaking of Feminism, which is upon occasion the most masculine thing under the sun. The valian feminists of England, the old suffragettes, are not dead, nor do they sleep: they are clamouring for prohibition of alcohol during the war. they are doing a lot of useful patriotic work, and they are incidentally beseeching Mr. Hughes, of Australia, to come hack to London, and Fettle down as an Imperial statesman. All this they do with an energy truly virile but when they assume that a man can become an Imperial statesman merely by changing his place of residence and wearing a pot-hat and spats—well, there you have the feminine touch. But among normal women—women, that is to say. with normal social prejudices and minds arranged according to gran'mama's prescription—the feminine touch is .more frequent. Appealing femininity is irresponsible : that of course: hut there is often method in it. with something too of guile. The dear duchesses who hire a. staff of nurses in England, endow a field hospital somewhere in France, and do good work among the sick and wounded in Fiancethese are worthy of all praise, in a, world where so many women are still wasting money. Rut when they have themselves photographed in-dainty uniform for the illustrated papers, when they inspire paragraphs about their devotion and the risks they run '"at the front" (oh. la. la', i, there you 'have the feminine touch. I do not object to it in the least. T like it. always have liked it. always shall; it is charming. The Programme of Life. Rut it is not new. It couldn't possibly be new. Women are one woman, all the earth over, world without end. Each of them has a touch of Judith and of .lae.l. of Berenice and Dolly Yarden. of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, of angel and of devil. Every woman is at heart more or less a prude, and (as Pope long ago pointed out I more or less a, rake. Every woman is capable of great devotions and mean little treacheries. Every woman is capable of dying for the. man who wounds her heart, and of risking hanging for the man who wounds her vanity. Every woman is part saint, part rebel. And the thing that makes these diverse qualities adorable in the millions of women who are all marvellously like each other , is the feminine touch. It was the feminine : touch in. Eve that allured the Third Person ! Singular and so brought (as someone re- [ marks' death into the world and all our! woes- I have, happily for me. many wo- • men friends—some who are modest, and i some who are merely modish, some who are shy and some who are seductive, some who are actresses and some who won't I admit •J_t—and T know that it is only the; feminine touch in them that makes the i old world Eden now and then. That tempts me. and I do eat. There is nothing new in it all as I said just now : it is just the same old programme or pageant of life, over and over again, age after age. [ An Early Suffragette. Tf you read Aristophanes, you will j find that bis women are own sisters to' Miss Sloo at the corner and Mrs. Oxeye in the next street it is that makes Aristophanes so modern. In his pages you are ever- ■ lastingly running across some fellow you were talking to last Wednesday, some girl i who showed you the socks she was knit- i ting for a sergeant last Tuesday w-eek. : Where shall you find in literature a wo- ■ man more modern than Lysistrata? Hear! her:-- ' j " All the long time the War has lasted, we have endured in modest silence all you men did : we never allowed ourselves to open our lips. We were far from satisfied, for we knew how things were going; often in our homes we would hear you discussing, upside down and inside out, some important turn of affairs. Then with sad hearts, but smiling lips, we would ask you; Well, in to-day's Assembly did they vote Peace ?—But, ' Mind your own business!' the husband would grow], 'Hold your tongue, do'.' And I would say no more."' There you have her. a suffragette unmistakable, albeit a suffragette sweetened. Her plan of campaign was not such as our modern reformers of her sex would approve ; but you could alter a few words here and there and persuade any man that the play was written in Manchester three years agoWill the Unchangeable Change. Women don't change. Religions change, dynasties disappear, the mountains are worn flat: but woman is as she ever was. and it is only the feminine touch that keeps her desirable. 'The women of Moliere. one meets them every day. though some of Shakespere's are of rarer stuff. The girls of Catullus and Tibullus and all that meolodious band are only gitfls of yesterday. Even the two or three most , terrible women of Petronius are -till alive and busy. And this is where the danger seems to ' lie. Men. being lull of all living crea- | tures the most irrational, do not love wo- j men for their virtue.-., but for their charm ; ---for the feminine touch. When charm, and virtues go together, so much the better: but when virtue is devoid of charm —alack the day ' And that is the danger I alluded to a sentence or so back. When : women get all they want in the arena of politics, when they have brought men entirely to heel iii the arena of moral*. when they have leformed horrid mas< n line manner,* to suit theii whim -what shall it profit them, if men find that the charms of their womanhood has gone'.' A man living not far from me was a policeman in London before the viae. He .-ays that the suffragette movement was awful

"you saw pretty and nice women dragged into it, and in a tew months they were just shriekers with untidy hair." That is his testimony. He will* have it that women who get the habit of marching in processions and forming deputation* lose their beaut v. 1 don't know. I have never had much to with women of that sort. I am. to tell the truth, quite dread fully afiaid of them. Women and the War. But the war i- reviving and invigorating the tcmiliiiH- touch. To-day all woman's splendid sympathies are alive and awake. Here and there a, few disordered shrew* may whimper for peace at anv price : hut the great majority of our women look with clear eyes of "faith to the victory ahead. The grief-stricken ones know and feel that the end will be worth the price : that is their comfort. Our girls and young women are being greatly sweetened and humanised by the war. Some who have thought mainly of self their whole lives through now have other things to think of. and that is good for them. The ieniinine touch may survive in the lost wretched outcast, but it is always at its finest and best vvhen woman is most womanly. The soil of war stimulates the womanly qualities to very strong growth. That is the only good thing I Know about afar, which I hate^