LONELY BACHELORS.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16750, 17 March 1926, Page 5

LONELY BACHELORS.

LONDON FULL OF THEM. Owing lo llle deplorable fact of there being over two million more women than men in Khgland eligible husbands are at a premium (writes Horace is'ewte in an English exchange). There must he thousands of young women in this country who would make admirable wives and mothers and cannot hope to marry. Yet, with the irony that seems inseparable from human affairs, there are many men who want lo be married and yet keep single for the all-sufficient reason that they do not meet the girls or women who might appeal to them as possible wives. Know What Lonliness means. London and other large towns are full of these men, I with my limited acquaintance, know many of them. As strangers, they came to London because their living was there. And because they have not had introductions or the knack of making acquaintances, as strangers they remain. During the days of their comparative youth they did not crave for feminine society. They were interested in sport, and for social relaxation they had their clubs and the friends they had made at school or the 'Varsity. But as the years passed and their friends cither married or drifted away they soon came to know what loneliness was. Admirable Husbands and Fathers. A sad phase is that many of them would have made admirable husbands and fathers. Yet because of the conditions of their lives they often come to a pitiful end. Kven if drink docs not get hold of them ultimately, they become soured elderly men who blame the fales, because, as they term it, 'they have missed the 'bus." It might be urged that these men who are eager to marry could meet likely wives iu hotels and the better sort of boarding-houses when they go for holidays. But rny experience of these places is much the same as that of others. The girls and women who are out to what is commonly called

"get off" are rarely the sort that a man is eager lo marry. Conversely, the really nice girls are either carefully guarded or rightly shy of making chauce acquaintances. The nice girls and women are lo be found in the homes of England. 'Without introductions lo these, a man rarely gets what he wants in the way of a wife.