THE SOCIAL ROUND

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 561, 26 November 1915, Page 4

THE SOCIAL ROUND

Mrs Mirains arrived in Christehurch from the north yesterday. . Mr and Mrs Hugh Roberts (Feilding) •are in town. Mr and Miss Patterson, who have been in Christehurch for a short visit, are returning to Oam'aru to-day. Mrs Collins motored over from Kaikoura yesterday, and is staying at the Clarendon. Mrs J. Hayes (Greymouth) is visiting k Christehurch. - Mrs Middletpn Todd (Sydney amongst- the guests at Warner's.Mrs Chaffey is home again, .after her turn of superintending the arrangements in connection with the H'anmer, Convalescent Home. Mrs D. Maefarlane (Lyndon) is now in charge. Mrs Stewart Meares (Fendaltoh) has gone to spend a holiday with Mrs McKinnon, Napier. Miss Petrie and Miss Coekburn, of the Lady Dudley Hospital, Johannesburg, who were in Christehurch a little time ago, are now staying with the former's mother, Mrs J. Petrie, Greymouth'. ••••' Mr and Mrs F. Montagu (Wellington) are visiting Christehurch. The Women's National Reserve at ' Palmerston North is very active in commencing classes for women to .qualify themselves for different work that they may be called upon to under--5 take. Mrs" Stanley White arrived in Christehurch yesterday, on her way back to Hokitika, after spending some time in Wellington. Miss Bay Tole, youngest daughter of the Hon. J. A. Tole and Mrs Tole, Remuera, was quietly married last week to Mr Percy Hunt, youngest son of Mr Leslie Hunt, Auckland. Only the immediate relatives of the bride and bridegroom were present. Mr and Mrs Percy Hunt will reside at Hamilton. Mrs R. Hastie, convenor of the Children 's Entertainment Committee in connection with the River Bank Carnival, has come into town from Cashmere Hills, and is now staying at '' Berwick House," Rolleston Avenue ('phone 2062). Writing to a friend on September 24, Dr Jessie Scott, of Remuera, who left Auckland in July to join the Scottish Women's Hospital at Kragujevatz, the town in the north of Serbia that was captured by the Germans a few weeks ago, states that she had arrived at Kragujevatz about three weeks-before, having travelled via Port Said, Alexandria, Athens, and Salonica. "The Scottish women have hospitals in four places, '■' she continued. "I am to remain in the village of Lazarevatz for the present. The country is very beautiful, with its undulating fields and soft wooded hills, and so fertile. The maize was just over, but the vineyards are full of grapes. Our hospital is full of malarial and typhoid cases just now, but we. expect surgical cases. Big guns were heard in the distance all last Sunday."

The usual weekly sale at the Red Cross Depot this week will be conducted by Mesdames C. L. Hart, Phil Hume,

and Richardson. These ladies have already taken the sale once, and the Depot Committee are very grateful to them for coming forward a second time. They will commence the sale this (Friday) evening, and continue tomorrow morning. They will have the usual cakes, sweets, flowers, etc., and a particularly enticing collection of Christmas cakes and puddings.

To-morrow afternoon the Cashmere Hills Red Cross workers are holding a display of work in the schoolroom, combined with a musical programme (arranged by Mrs Carey) and afternoon tea. The branch have in view the augmentation of their material fund, upon which the demands have been very heavy of late, due to. the big amount of work sent monthly to the Central Depot. Therefore, a small charge for admission will be made.

A little dancer' at the Paris Opera House wondered what she could do to help the men at the front. She had no money to give, and she had not many belongings which could be of much use to them, but she ransacked her wardrobe, and came upon the piles of gauze flounces which she used to wear on the boards before the war in the old' days, when there was still an opera ballet. She sent the whole collection to the front, and the little ballet girl's petticoats were used as mosquito nets by the troops in the trenches of the Argonne. Reading in the papers that, owing to the war, there was plenty of work far everyone, two women of about 70, inmates of the Shoreditch workhouse, decided to leave the institution and earn their awn living. The aged couple rented a room, and to make artificial flowers, at which they earned about 10/- a week. One of them died suddenly from pneumonia, and the other, being asked at the inquest what she intended to do, replied: —"I have saved a few shillings, and when they are gone, if I cannot get on, I shall have to sell my bits of clothing. When I come to the end of the money I get for them I shall have to go back to the workhouse.'' In Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S.A., the women's clubs have been striving for some time to put an end to corruption in municipal polities. At the last elections 400 women watched at the polling booths with notebooks and cameras. Many of the women had their cameras smashed and their notebooks snatched away, but they gathered enough evidence of corrupt practices to lay a serious complaint before the Governor of the State. The Governor refused to act, and the women's clubs therefore carried their complaint to the Federal Court. An enquiry has been held, and has led to the conviction and imprisonment of the Mayor and a number of other prominent politicians. Miss S. Macnaughton, the well-known authoress of "Christina McNab," "A Woman's Diary of the War," etc., who has been serving at the west front for months, and has just had the Order of Leopold conferred on her by the King of the Belgians, writes:—"lt has been my lot to see a little of warfare

before the present crisis. I happened to be present at the bombardment of Rio de Janeiro, and later I and some friends rode through the Balkans —not during the actual war, but when much fighting, and still more massacring, was going on. I was fortunate to find work to do in the South African war, and I believe I may call the present war my fourth campaign. And after such experiences as I have had (and much more that I read about), I should be inclined to say that in the matter of the care of the sick and wounded, and abundance of food and clothing, there has never been a war which has left one so little to regret.'' ,Her modesty allows her one boast —that of claiming to be a good cook. She has a soup kitchen at the front, where unaided she often prepares soup for several hundred men a day. It is "a little dark place, really only a small space under an archway, and cut off from the rest of the station by a door of sacking stretched ; on a wooden frame.'' In this not very lordly apartment, is a small stove which burns and a large one which did not. Two French officers once peered in with the flattering remark, "Englishwomen, of course? No one else seems to do so much for anyone." Gobso Golde, the Chicago financier, and his family were doing Westminster Abbey. Suddenly the old man gave a contemptuous laugh. "The poets' corner!'' he sneered, snapping to his guide book. * ' What good's a corner in poets? Gimme wheat or cotton, eh, mother!"

The Girl Guide movement is making great strides in England; in a short time the number of guides has increased from 5000 to 15,000. Many of them are employed at the War Office, the Army Pay Offices, several departments of the Foreign Office, and in a number of private hospitals. The War Office has stated that as confidential'messengers and orderlies they can be trusted better than boys. Many other testimonials have been sent to headquarters, in which the intelligence and general conduct of the girls are highly commended. Employers like the quiet way in which they spend their time knitting when on duty awaiting orders. At the meeting of the British Association in Manchester in September the work usually done by men and boys was entrusted to Girl Guides, who performed it most effectively. When on duty they wear a neat navy blue dress, with a felt hat to match, pale blue tie, and trefoil badge. Housewifery in all its branches has to be mastered, and a system of physical development prepares members to understand the laws of health and to exercise themselves by drill and by outdoor games. Prominence is given to discipline, and the girls have to be obedient, ready to sacrifice their own wishes and desires, prompt to rely upon their own initiative, and always polite and good tempered. The basis of the seheme is to develop character and the various faculties that are found in any assemblage of girls. They enter a company from the age of 11 to 18; at 15 they are eligible as patrol leaders; over 18 they may take office as lieutenants; while all captains must be over 21. The movement aims at helping the future mothers of the race to be good citizens, and to fulfil their duties to the home and to the State with an intelligent sense of their responsibilities.