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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Many Wives Aid the Enemy Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. "Mollie," the toys, "is a perfectly good girl, but the has her friends at the house all the time, who are laughing and making candy and going to afternoon movies." By KATHLEEN NORRIS THINGS have just been I running down at home since Ted and Larry went away to war," whined a woman to me in the market the other day. "You see," she went on, "Larry was making good money and he helped out a lot, and by this time I suppose Ted would have been a wage-earner, too. Now with just Betty and Dad at home, we are the most dismal group you can imagine, and the money trouble doesn't help to console us! I can't wait to have the boys get back, when we can get all straightened out, pay our debts and start over." I looked at this woman in amazement. amaze-ment. She loves her sons; she will grieve bitterly if either Is taken by war. And yet she could stand there and tell me, with a sort of melancholy melan-choly "Hde, that the welcome provided pro-vided ior the boys of the family is going to be complaints, debts, anxieties, responsibilities no heartening heart-ening assurance of the family's solvency and security, no encouraging encourag-ing plans for rest and recuperation just the old tedious complaining and protesting against the general injustices of fata. Another woman wrote to her son that she and his grandmother, who have been living together, have had so serious a disagreement that they are going to law about it. She asks him to answer several questions by return mail: Does he remember his grandmother saying that his mother had been mixed up in an unsavory love affair before her marriage; will h testify that his grandmother often called his mother ugly names, and so on. The lonely son, wasting the best years of his life In the bleak Aleutians, Aleu-tians, must sit down and handle the quarrels of the two undisciplined women. Runs Down His Wife. Another woman writes her son disparaging letters about his wife. Mollle, she says, is a perfectly good girL but she has friends at the house all the time who are laughing and making candy and going to afternoon movies, and the mother-in-law thinks it is a shame to have Bob's money wasted that way. And again a homesick man must open letters that fill his heart with bitterness and despair. As for the "dear John" letters these have become a recognized aid to the enemy! The "dear John" letter let-ter is a missive that opens with the shattering phrase, "I have been thinking of us and our married life, and I believe we would both be happier if we were to obtain a divorce di-vorce and make a fresh start with other mates." Don't smile at this and dismiss It as only an occasional thing. It Is a very real and desperate menace to the morale and peace of mind of our fighting boys. Hundreds and hundreds hun-dreds of these cruel notes go forth daily, and the effect they have on a man whose nerves are shaken already al-ready by danger, by the loss of comrades, com-rades, by homesickness, mosquitoes and strangeness may be Imagined. The woman he loves doesn't want to see him any more. The little children chil-dren who cried when daddy went away won't be his children when ht comes back. The homt and securi- Already shaken by danger, home-xicknmit. home-xicknmit. . . . ty for which he is fighting aren't either home or secure. The devastating devas-tating breath of war is not only blighting his life now, at the terrible battle front, but it has destroyed everything else, too. Grim, Vital Days Ahead. I would like to remind these letter-writing women that we are going go-ing into grim and vital postwar days. Every woman in America will be a help or a burden to the building of the new world then there will be no half-way. Thousands Thou-sands of helpless, selfish, discontented discon-tented women will find themselves left out of the running, their children chil-dren rebellious at the change that gives them a strange home and a new father, their new mates not inclined in-clined to be particularly considerate consider-ate of the women who coldbloodedly could drop old mates during the crisis of war. But thank God there will be other women, millions of them women who have written nothing but encouraging en-couraging and loving letters during this time; women who have planned practically for the homecoming, home-coming, are saving money, are out of debt and are full of Ideas for Tom's future; women who know that more than our pilgrim or pioneer pi-oneer mothers needed them, we need now courage, self-control, economy and foresight. It Is the woman who is strong, faithful to her mate, concerned with his welfare and that of the children and able to live on her income, no matter how small, who is going to be the inspiration, in-spiration, the essential creator, of the new America. |
