TRAINING FOR SOLDIERS' WIVES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLV, Issue 10450, 1 December 1919, Page 8

TRAINING FOR SOLDIERS' WIVES.

I Small parties of wives and fiancees' have been leaving England continuously since the Armistice was signed. Canada alone lias annexed 30,000 wives from different parts of the Mother Country Australia and New Zealand "account for at. least another 20,000 (says'an Etoglish paper). localising that many of the- young i women were embarking on a life advonI ture overseas with only a vague knowledge of conditions in their Adopted country, eiforts have been set on toot to give these horaemakers some special-' ised training which might "equip them for their prospective duties. Accordingly the London City Council organised and financed a department of home economics to provide gratis such instruction in domestic and farm work as the new brides must expect to undertake. In addition to -cookery, laundry work and similar subjects, the students, many of them ex-muntion workers, are twins instructed in homo organisation, a course which includes the art of home-plan-ning—a lost art in many parts of this twentieth century world—also the selection of furniture, a knowledge of textiles and the best methods of lighting and heating. Even the smaller amenities of homo life have not been overlooked, and students are being shown how to mako such decorative tuings as window-boxen. All this domestic tuition is further rounded out by attendance at a house practice course, during which the girls prepare and secve meals to invited. guest 3, undertake laundry work, not of the- peok-a-boo waist description, but in the nature of a. ''weekly-wash" as it develops in everyday life. Lessons nru given in canning fruit and vegetables, how to mako butter, keep bees, run a gardon and rear poultry. .They aro taught how to cut up a chicken an.l select moats, finally the curriculum includes lectures on "civics." citizenship, and tho matters of personal care that every girl budding into wonijm. hood should know.