BRAVE LITTLE COCKNEY GIRLS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1412, 17 May 1917, Page 29

BRAVE LITTLE COCKNEY GIRLS.

“ ’ER BOY” AT THE FRONT. Maude Radford Warren, writing in the “Saturday Evening Post,” on the way the Cockney grl is doing her bit for England, tells of one pathetic little “canary,” as they call the girls who work with lyddite shells. The government allows them to work with the poisonous explosives only the shortest possible time, but their faces turn yellow from the fumes,„ probably for all time. “Girls, young, full of life, with the first chance in their lives of buying pretty clothes, and with more men in London than were ever there before!” Mrs. Warren phrases it that way.

This particular “canary” had been working beside the writer in a munition factory. They were on their way home in a third class carriage when the day’s work was over. The “canary” showed a clipping which she pulled from her pocket. It reads: “Is your best boy wearing khaki? If not, don’t you think he should be? If he does not think you and your country are worth fightng for. do you think he is worthy of you? Don’t pity the girl who is alone; her young man probably is a soldier, fighting for her and her country—and for you. If your young man neglects his duty, the time w'll come when he will neglect you.”

“So I says to ’er like this” —the girl was saying (she had been telling about a “lidy” who had come to her house and had been talking about the evil of buying th'ngs we “didn’t ’ave to ’ave) —“ ‘Miss,’ I says, ’ ‘do you know I have a boy at the front, and that I sent ’im there?’” The girl paused an instant, then went on: “ ‘Miss,’ I says, ‘I know as well as if you had said it that somebody’s been tellin’ you I bought a pair of ’igh boots and a feather boa and a new ’at. Before my boy went to France he ’inted that when he got his furlough maybe ’e’d ask me to get married. When he was gone I worked ’ard in the shop, and I do my bit at the canteens too, and I saved ’ard, as the advertisements said. I can show you my war savin’s certificate.

" ‘l’d walk round the streets at night and Sundays alone, for I wouldn’t want to walk out with any boy but ’im. I’d see all these New Zealand and Austrilian soldiers out wif girls they’d pick up. I could have had one myself if I would. I saw girls out that ’ad never been asked for their company before. I was glad they’d got their chance till I began to think: Maybe these New Zealanders and Austrilians ’ave left sweet’earts be’ind ’em that’ll get their ’earts broke twice! So I thought of my boy goin’ through France, where the girls ’ave so much style, and seein’ pretty nurses; and I thought: “All men 's weak.” When I saw ’ow bad my boots was. and ’ow fided my ’at, and knew my boy’d be back on furlough, I says: “I don’t care: ’e’s goin’ to see me lookin’ better than ’e ever ’as before. So I up and buys things; and I ain’t sorry. I been doin’ wifout meat and butter and eggs to make hup. If I ’•ad it all to do over. I would. My boy is bound to be pleased with ’ow I look.’ ”

“That’s what I said to the lidy; and. my word, she cried! And she says: ‘I ’ope he comes back to you safe; my boy didn’t.’ So I cried, too, and she went off; and next thing I ’eard of her she was drivin’ a van for a canteen. My boy ’e did come ’ome safe, and I met ’im at Charing Cross: and we ’adn’t got to Trafalgar Square before ’e asked me if I was ready. The lidy that drives the van, she bought a special license for us, so we wouldn’t lose none of his furlough. You can see my ring. And ’e’s back in France now, and I’m wearin’old clothes again to set a good hexample; and my nice things is in the bottom drawer till ’e gets back. And, whatever ’appens, we’ve ’ad a bit of ’appiness.” “Poor brave little Cockney women!” the writer exclaims. “Poor little prototype of every woman of every nat’on who has husband or son or lover at the front! I don’t, think the hardest person in the world could go down the London streets and see the soldiers walking with their wives and children without feeling touched. The soldiers seem to want to feel the physical touch of those they love. It takes a wife’s hand to make them forget the trenches; the glance of a baby’s innocent eyes to close their own eyes to all the horrors they have seen. One passes them, saying silently: 'Good luck and safe return!’”

The invention of the typewriter has given employment to nearly a million women.

The inconvenience caused by no dyes being imported into New Zealand since the outbreak of the war, has been remedied by a Manawatu resident. He claims to have found a weed which grows abundantly to produce ineradicable dye.

Cigarette smoking is said to have become such a habit among women war workers that it has been seriously proposed to reserve ladies’ smoking compartments on certain London suburban railways.

“Peg o’ My Heart” put up a surprising record of 327 performances during its 12 months’ season in Austral a. The record is made all the

more interesting by the fact that no member of the company, with the allowable exception of Miss Gilham. missed a single performance. And

Miss Gilliam’s absence from the cast for two or three nights in Victoria was entirely unavoidable. During the company’s season in Tasmania she happened to overhear the disloyal remarks of a certain public man, and was detained in Tasmania to give evidence against him when a prosecution was instituted.

Old lady (inquisitive and plain) to young civilian: Young fellow, why aren’t you in khaki? Young civilian: For the same reason, my good woman, that you are not in the beauty show — a matter of sheer, absolute physical unfitness.