WHITE WIVES OF COLOURED MEN.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17066, 20 August 1917, Page 6

WHITE WIVES OF COLOURED MEN.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ENGLISH

GIRLS MARRY ORIENTALS

Most British girls ; would shudder at the thought of becoming engaged to a Chinaman, an Indian, or a negro.

Yet, strange as it may seem, the men of the East do possess a subtle, hypnotic attraction for nun,bers of white girls, once the latter have overcome the first feeling of natural repulsion. Horrible stories are often reported in the English Press of the tragedies happening to white girls who have got into the clutches of Chinamen in Liverpool, Manchester or Cardiff.

Now, the position of the girl who has lawfully married her Chinese lover :s but little happier than the lot of the. poor dupe who has be*.n trapped by the wily yellow man, with his veneer of European civilisation. The wife may be discarded, actually thrown into the streets any day; it' she is the mother jf a little half-caste baby, her pitiful plight can be better imagined^ than described. . •

Also, it is a' fact that some of the Chinese residents of Liverpool rind Manchester actually sell or exchange the British wives they have married before a white missionary. When the Chinaman tires of his white wife, he has been known to put a notice, in Chinese, outside his house. In a few days the poor deluded wife is handed over by her husband to another yellow man, who pays for her in cash!

But, you majy say, such men. are only the very scum of our Cliniatb'wns. Are they ? 'Often they are'the same yellow '•nen whom one sees parading the main streets of our cities, clad in fashionable European clothes, wim diamonds sparkling in their rings and tie-pins. The average Chinaman can appear very "British" when he wishes.

A warning to all white girls against contracting marriage with Chinese s contained in the "North China Daily News":— . , '

An English girl and her Chinese husband, Woo—their marriage took place at a London registry office early in 1907 —were found travelling with the natives in the steerage of a liner noi. long ago, with their two infant children. Recently the woman's husband left her to go on a journey, and the English girl found herself committed to taking care of her Chinese mother-in-law and her husband's first, wife!

Woo admitted that he was married m China before going to London. The Englishwoman's interests were cared for by the British Consul at Chengtu. But, her status in British and. Chinese law alike is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. Girls can be bought at any time for a i&w shillings in China, and the.English, wife may be reduced to looking after her successors in; the house. .

White girls would do well to remember always the great difference between fche people of the East and those of the West.

However nice the ■ idea of • the "brotherhood of man" may seem *n theory, its practice between people of the East and of the West, especially when they are of the opposite sex, is absolutly impossible.

Another great source of danger to British girls with foolish or ignorant ideas of what constitutes a " romantic" marriage is the presence of so many Indian students in'-our'towns.'

Indians are often very fine fellows. We all'honour'them for what they have done for the'King-Emperor in this war; but as.husbjan^^for our British girts we do not"wan€ them.

A well-known Anglo-Indian journalist told the writer:

"This problem of the Hindoo and the British girl has the odious aspect that the dusky lover is already a married man. He never strikes his little British sweetheart as being a husband already; and for good reasons he may never have seen his wife!

"All good-caste Hindoos are wedded in infancy. The Hindoo law or medical student—to mention a numerous class —on his return to India finds his childwife a woman. For the sweetheart or wife he left behind in Britain he doesn't care a straw."

To touch now upon the nauseous subject of marriages between white girls and black men—Africans or American negroes. Volumes could be filled with good reasons -why v>-hite girls should not associate, with, let alone marry, black men.

But the matter can be summed up when one says that for both moral and physical reasons the black man' is totally unfitted to be the husband of a whits woman.