COLONIALS AND ENGLISH WIVES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10205, 15 February 1919, Page 8

COLONIALS AND ENGLISH WIVES

A NEW LAND FOR THE ENGLISH GIRLS.

Wo aro going home in a few months, they say (writes Mr Godfrey Turner, a New Zealander, in the ‘‘Daily News”). Wo are curious folk, wo of the Southern Cross, for through two generations or three it is your land —not ours—that wo have called Home, and written with a capital H. Only the long journey and tho weary days have taught us that, after all, our own lands are the proper place for us. Wo be but tho younger sons of younger sons — your kindred and clan, but not your own personal family. Wo look back to our own place, and we wonder. , . . How much more must they wonder who are taking wives back with them, girls or women who will bo strangers to their folk, and, maybe, _ scarce welcome to their friends. Quite probably they hare not thought of this yet; and I shall be glad if they never have ca-uso to think. But I am afraid. Not for the man—at tho worst ho will have his work. Tho woman may be very lonely, with n loneliness that you English can scarcely understand. We can put on one side tho cases where our men have been knaves and have lied to tho women about their sheep runs and cattle stations, their ‘‘treacle mines” and “blackberry farms”; and deal in the same way with the fools who hare married tho hangers-on of the pot-houses or tho bad girls of the purlieus or the draw-ing-rooms. Such unions aro predestined to misery. There are some rules which apply to the whole world;, and .not the. least of ihem is that regarding the marriage of fools. There remains . the great, question of those who between themselves are and may be happy, but are very likely to. find themselves the victims of circumstance.

To-night m the regimental institute the place is gay with the chatter of “diggers’’ and “Waacs.” Very merry boys and girls—good friends—perhaps suitable motes. Only the Wane talks with the accent and voice of her county; and that is not our speech. Out there her dialect would make her a subject for curiosity for a few days, and he a matter of comment for years. And she would he miserable by reason of if. Far-fetched, you think P To j show how true my story is, there is 'an English -lady in a Y.M.O.A, canteen here, and she is asked ,a dozen times a week; “But you are a New Zealander, aren’t you? You do not speak like the others."’ If the men speak like this, what would their sisters say to a girl with ■ a North Country iongue—or to one from Devon or Somerset 5 And the sad soul-hunger qf the woman for the harsh voice and vowel exaggerations of her own people , . Be they town or country girls it will he all the same. Save for two or three cities, our big places are much like your English cathedral towns. The amusements are better, the shops are incomparable, there are trams, wide streets, each has his own house —cottage you would call it—and- two or three or four newspapers a day. But socially there are the same cliques, the same narrowness of vision, and the same semi-suspicion of strangers. You may have noticed that a man can go almost anywhere on face-value, so to speak; hut friends come very slowly to the woman, and long after she is admitted to their circle she knows that though she is amongst them she is not of them. The servant problem will he more acute than she has ever known it. She will find that even her scale of providing for the home must be remodelled. Our dietary is twice as solid and about half as varied as yours. Only one thing will be the same; whatever her creed, bo she Church or chapel; it will he unaltered by the seas. But our fathers took English girls to rougher, lonelier places, and we know that they were happy. It all depends on the girl —and she is likely to be much what the Colonial make hor, if sbo has chosen wisely. Lot’s give thanks that there are still women ready to declare that our lands shall be tjic'r lands, bur people their people . . . and that our gods aro their gods. A last word of comfort! Dress will compensate for very many things, and our Colonial women have money to buy good clothes and many places where they can get them out -there. We are but little behind you in the Homeland in stylo or fashion or opportunity of dress.

Only a few months or a few years of loneliness amongst strangers away from folk, and the girl will have saved np enough to take a trip Homo—there, 1 have used tho word again! And she will not want to make the trip, for tho lands of the Southern Cross bold those who go there prepared to lovo them. Tho days glide into years . . . and you shall bo like our mothers, who dream of England and"the little’fields of Home, see them “like heaven at the end of quiet lives,” and aro content to die in the land that has mado their sons.