WHY THEY WED ENGLISH GIRLS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 16949, 10 April 1917, Page 5

WHY THEY WED ENGLISH GIRLS.

OUR OVERSEAS SOLDIERS!

i^vPLAIN

By E. C BULEY (Author of " Glorious, Deeds of Australasians").

When I was a small boy I delighted' in those stories which began "An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman," They usually ended,. I remember, in aa immense score for the Irisoman.

Those stories are recalled to me i» the satisfaction I get nowadays in attendng a certain club for Overseas soldiers where I can meet at one table, a Canadian, an Australian, a South African and a New Zealander.

When this group gathers—the ThrsaMusketeers of the British Empire, with, the Australian thrown in as a modern: ■d'Artagnan there'is •good* talk, with a good story now and then. So we foregathered' the other night. Soon the conversation turned upon the experiences of the club secretary. On the previous ,day he had presented ,a travelling bag to a member of his clerir cat staff, who was marrying a bright English girl. When the presentation, was over his right-hand man, a sergeant, had asked for an extra/hour for luncheon. ' An hour later, the sergeant had telephoned through to him in triumph. ']■■■' "I have beaten' Bill by twenty minutes," was the message. . Tho point was that his expedition had left Bill the last single man among five young Overseas soldiers, all sirigla and unattached three months before. "Now, this is going on everywhere," I said, "and J, want you boys to explain. Are the English girls nicer and more attractive than the girls you left flxijirind you? Or is it that you ar« lonely away from home, and more susceptible to their charms? Or, again, i; Jt because you have better opportunities here for meeting the right girls ?" They tackled the problem manfully, and with knitted brows as it merited, Athos; from Canada, delivered judgment first.

"The English girls," saiQ lie, "are pretty and charming, and good. But there are just as good left in Canada. It's not that.

"I think it's more this waj. The men who marry here are often the quiet sort—fellows who' hadn't much chance with the girls at home against the bright young sparks with a lot to say. When the time came to put on khaki the bright boys were not first to enlist, you.can be sure. Then the girls discovered their mistake, maybe; but it was too late. The quiet men found in England that their uniform got them a hearng. They gained a confidence they never had before, and so they won good English, wives. That's about it, I tnink."

By this time Aramis, of Africa waa eager for his say; he was talking almost before the other had finished. "You may say what you please')" he contended, "but the English girls really are fresher andvmore charming' than ■ those I am accustomed to see.

" And they are such bricks. See the way they turn their hand to any work that's? going; and watch how little fuss tney make. I've seen them in hospital, visiting their wounded menfolk. By jing! any fellow who comes her© from Overseas and gets a good English girl is a lucky chap; that's what I think." "It'd be funny,'.'.-argued the Australian, "if they didn't have red cheeks and bright eyes, in a country and climate such as this. They look all right; but you want to go deeper than that! "Now, the English girl has got a taking way of looking up to a man, as if he were something a little stronger, whose protection she was seeking. 1 hear though," Jhe added, reflectively) "that they don't cling quite so gently after you are married to them. . ."

"And that," interrupted Porthos from New Zealand, "is why I'm going to help you to marry one of these English girls this day five weeks." N - '"'But the real reason," he continued, as the laughter died down, "seems to me to be that the English girls have been specially good to us. When I was j in convalescent camp there was a r'bgue' of a Scotsman used to borrow my hat to walk out in, because he said the girls were so nice to the men who wore those hats. - - *

"It was true, but not because of any specie! merit of ours. It was their golden hearts that made them so goodi to strangers so far from- home and fighting in a good cause. Ay, many a tim* the kindness ef an English girl hag brought tears to my eyes." Porthos is 6ft. 4in., a quiet, impretsive man; and we listened with respect to his conclusion.

"It's a good thing," he asserted, "that our boys ar<* finding nice girls to marry here. Maybe the girls will take their brothers Overseas after them, and they may find in our sisters just the fresh charm we have found in theirs. Taht means yet another link of Empire, doesn't it?" • .

"Good old Empire!" we replied in chorus; and let it go at that. .*