CLOTHES THAT MAKE MANNERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12646, 2 June 1919, Page 7

CLOTHES THAT MAKE MANNERS.

“ Don't you imagine,” Raid Agnes to me, ns she busied herself in tying up a largo parcel, “ that tho age of chivalry is going to survive khaki 1 Look at Jack. Ho would have cheerfully carried a hundredweight of coal for me while the war lasted, but now he’s in civvies I wouldn’t dare ask him to carry] a calendar.” I forhoro to remind Agnes, who as women go is intelligent—that in her V.A.D. days she carried about the hospital without complaint pads of water and trays. If the orderly happened to be otherwise occupied and a wounded soldier had to be shifted from bed toi balcony, she carried men, too. Bub when her husband’s demobilisation brought her back to home duties Agnes also went into “civvies"—if such a' term pan bo applied to the extremely feminine toa-gown in which she fluttered about the boudoir, which had likewise boon aroused from its hrown-hol-'land sleep. “The fact is,” she continued, unconsciously following my train of reflection, “ however much our feelings have changed through all we have done and suffered, our manners will always be dictated by our clothes. Jack is, I am convinced, just as capable of heroism now as when ho was in tho trenches ( but parcel-carrying isn’t an. affair of conduct, but of manners.” “ You mean he’s put on the old attitude towards parcels • with his blue* sergo suit aud felt hat?” “Exactly; and,so have L A uniform made it quite easy to gink not only sell' hut also sex- lu toy V.A.D. kit it really never occurred to me that I was a wch man. My only anxiety whilo I wore it was to do whatever work I could.. Dressing terrible wounds, washing up, or even scrubbing—nothing was too hard or too humble. 'Now I have scarcely anything to do but wear expensive and inconvenient clothes ini which I almost resent having to carry my own parcels! It’s demoralising. I assure you .1 often wish I could chuck] being a woman) and go hack to some] sort of useful work. But then there’s Jack.” ' “Jack, who has ceased to he a soldier and become a man?” Agnes heaved a sigh so deep that all her lace and chiffon shivered. “ I suppose,” she added ruefully, “I shall get) used in time to being just a woman,’’ “You must. Agnes,” I answered quickly, “ for he needs a woman, nob a nurse, now, and underneath that blue serge manner you know there’s a hero’s heart.” But as I left my demobilised heroine, so discontent with her feminine camouflage, I realised how true it is that we adjust ourselves involuntarily to the clothes wo wear. Chiffon and lace mean a life of corresponding frivolity. We are—both men and women—to a great/ extent what our clothes make us. The chivalrous war manner is going out with khaki; tho war worker who has learnt from her uniform to be energetic and self-reliant is going back to silken indolence. What such women want is a civil uniform in which they can be a s busy and as neuter as working bees. AA there null not ho tor a generation enough husbands to go round, why not?—R.D., in the “Daily Mail.”