SLACKERS IN SKIRTS

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13449, 30 March 1917, Page 3

SLACKERS IN SKIRTS

PLAIN WORDS TO SOME GIRLS. ; In an article denouncing "slackers in skirts," a Johannesburg paper says: The Johannesburg girl who likes to think she is in that soulless circle known as the "smart set,'' may enter for a war fund tennis tournament in the hope of picking up a prize, or go to a war fund dance in the hope oi doing the same with a husband, but there her war activities cease. A street collection is much too tiring, aii i must be left to married women and school girls. Helping with a refreshment buffet for soldiers, or doing some other humble task upon which no limelight shines isn't smart enough. And, of course, she can't nurse, because it never struck her to try to learn; and besides, the uniform wouldn't go with the present colour of her hair. So month after month she talks dress, plays tennis, goes to dances and theatres, and experiments with her complexion as though there wasn't a war within a million miles. The man who are fighting for her may languish and die because there are not enough nurses and hospital assistants. The wives and children left behind may suffer in silence for the lack of a helping hand. A dozen national needs may be only half supplied because there are not sufficient voluntary workers. But the smart girl set doesn't worry. Probably she doesn't even know. She's too busy studying fashion plates, and wondering whether Madame Cleopatra's fatless face cream at a guinea a pot is really all it is cracked up to be. If this terrible war ever crosses her mind at all (which is doubtful), it excites nothing more than a romantic desire to take a handsome and slightly-wounded officer out for a drive. (N.B.—Nobody under the rank of captain need apply.) There are exceptions to this appalling mixture of folly and indifference found in the wealthy homes af the Randthank heaven for them. But they are not numerous. A distressing amount of intelligence and energy which could be usefully employed in war time,- is wasted on a lap-dog sort of existence, which is bad enough in peace time, but which in a period when the very existence of the war is at stake is nothing short of a crime against the State.