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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Shortening Sail at Your Home Bell Syndicate. WNU Featuret. mwl TJl wjk Li If you are lucky to have a country retreat, where he can find peace and quiet, putter with farm machinery, raise chickens, milk cows, sell fruit, where he can late his loved wife, baby girls, books and forget the world for a while, thank God for it By KATHLEEN NORRIS "T TOW long must we put I 1 up with my husband's J. 1 postwar disillusionment disillusion-ment and discontent?" writes Mrs. Harry Kling of Chicago. "He came back four months Ego, and after the first delight at having him home again, honorably discharged, it has been nothing but difficulty and gloom. He was always a well-balanced well-balanced man, affectionate, steady and contented. He is now nervous, critical, or worse than all darkly silent for hours. He has gone back into his old firm of claim adjusters, ad-justers, .and is making good money, with good prospects ahead. But I can't stand this sort of home life much longer. long-er. No harmony, no conversation, conversa-tion, no plans, no fun. He is 35, 1 am 32; our daughters are 5 and 3. "Harry wants to give up our comfortable com-fortable apartment, where I have a part-time maid, break up all our pleasant associations, upset the girls' schooling they go to all-day nursery schools and move to the country. He has his eye on a sprawling sprawl-ing farm 35 miles out, house in bad i repair, 52 acres partly cultivated, tenant house of three rooms the farmhouse has about seven rooms, i lpptrln lipht fivtnrps And nlumhinff 40 years old, and everything imaginable imagi-nable in the way of refrigerator, telephone, gas stove, linoleums, curtaining, painting, yet to be done. Here he proposes we live for years perhaps forever. I adore my husband, hus-band, I have not loved any other man since I met him, at 20, but do you think it wise to puD up all our roots simply because he has been emotionally and nervously upset up-set by the war? Won't he outgrow this in time? Wouldn't it be wiser to wait, for the girls' sake and for all cur sakes?" My answer to this is, my dear Mrs. Kling, don't make the mistake of thinking that this fearful war, some of whose phases have ended, is like any other war that ever was. ! After peace negotiations with the powers of savagery and lawlessness are signed, sealed and delivered, we still have a titanic job ahead of us service folk and civilians alike. This postwar job will not only be to preserve pre-serve world peace, it will be to preserve pre-serve world sanity. A Shattered World. It will not be only to keep a few hundred thousand depressed and mentally affected men sane; it will be to keep us all sane. This war has bitten too deep into the equilibrium equilib-rium of humanity; too much that is unthinkable and unbearable has happened. Europe will be peopled by millions of folk who have known what it was for weeks, months, years to be homeless, hungry, hun-gry, desperate. The sacred thing that Is a man's right to work, to love, to serve his family, to build his home has been outraged and destroyed. Barren wastes of ashes and ruins will be wearily searched and combed by vaguely wandering hordes children whose first experience ex-perience of life was fright, fear, hunger. Women who have looked upon death, death in the. mass, heaped hundreds of Innocent women Bit loved wie, his baby girls. ... and children slain, and lying un-buried un-buried in what once were grassy parks and splendid streets. Nothing like this ever has happened hap-pened in the world before. Try to realize that we will not only be fighting, fight-ing, in these years to come, for those alien peoples overseas, we will be fighting with every humane and scientific weapon In our power for ourselves. That honor and charity and service may live on in the world, that homes and firesides, books and schools and tree-shaded towns may still exist, that our hearts and souls shall not be ravaged rav-aged again by the fearful cruelties man may Inflict upon his fellow-man, fellow-man, will take all that we have of courage and vision and hard, humble hum-ble labor. A Country Retreat. Your man has done his share. He has jeopardized his reason in these years when you and the babies waited for him, safe and snug in protected America. Now you three persons whom he loves must give him back those years. If you are lucky enough to have a country retreat, where he ca find peace and quiet, where he car. putter with farm machinery, raise chickens, milk cows, sell fruit; where he can take his loved wife, his books, his baby girls, and forget the great world for awhile, thank God for it. Take it gratefully, and as he grows stronger and saner you'll see how he longs to share it, to let other wounded souls and bodies rest under his big trees, to let other bewildered soul-scarred men fish his stream, help harvest his corn, sleep deep in the country guest room shaded by the pear trees. We are going to find some big words for what we have to do for our men now. Teaching, helping, cheering, healing. ' Begin with your own. Forget all the past, as Europe must. Think only of a better tomorrow, tomor-row, and do your share to make it come true. |