THE WORST KIND OF CAD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17882, 25 June 1926, Page 11

THE WORST KIND OF CAD.

FOOLISH FEMININE FAITH. By EVELYN VIVIAN. One has met a cad or two in one’s acquaintanceships with the opposite sex. But none, stands out so unpleasantly in one’s reluctant memory as the man who likes to create the impression that he “ knows all about women.’ It is one of his charming characteristics that he essays to “ pump ” ether women regarding members of their own sex in order to extend the sphere of his dubious knowledge. He talks a great deal about psychoanalysis and the subtleties of feminine psychology. He will pour out the tale of self-revelation, sometimes merely foolish, sometimes bitterly tragic, that some wretched woman has told him in an impulsive mood: his object being to get another woman's point of view on the matter. Tell him to his smirking face just what you think of him, and he is genuinely amazed that you are anything but intrigued and delighted that he has chosen you as the recipient of his broken confidences. He is so monstrously sure that you will gloat over the foolish faith betrayed. Foolish faith! It is the tragedy of our sex that it continues to repose faith in what ought by now—judging from male novelists’ fiction specialising in feminine psychology—to be an exploded tradition; the tradition that Man is discretion’s self, and can be trusted with the most sacred secret. A woman who in a greater or lesser degree has been “ foolish,” has wandered perchance off the beaten track, would rather go through fire, figuratively speaking, than to another woman’s heart. For counsel. for comfort, for attempted selfjustification she turns with pitiful eagerness to the first glib-tongued “ father confessor ” who gets her in a communicative mood. She is persuaded there is no such thing as a “ safe ” feminine confidante; she is convinced that her poor little secrets will be all over the town if she passes them on to a member of her own sex. Or that at best, if her feminine frjjend be a high-minded and right-thinking woman, she will be “ cut.” condemned or patronised. If impulsive women who feel that they simply must “ fess up ” to some past, present or contemplated 'folly could only review their conception of masculine versus feminine outlooks and judgments they would pause before they gave the masculine cad a psychological tit-bit for subsequent smokingroom discussion. They would learn that the best type of woman friend, the tried and proven comrade, can be silent as the grave and sympathetic in the finest and most helpful sense of the word.