OCR Text |
Show Kathleen Norris Says: Stop Criticizing Women! Bell Syndicate. WNTJ Feature!. Certain idle women do drift about to afternoon bars and lounges, accumulating accumulat-ing "whisky blotches," but the percentage is very low. Probably they are useless, anyway. By KATHLEEN NORRIS IT SEEMS to me manifestly unfair in Congresswoman Clare Luce to say that millions mil-lions of American women have done little or nothing to help the war effort except perhaps per-haps to keep their skins lily white and soft for some G.I. to touch when he comes home. And manifestly unfair in Damon Runyon to quote' this in a syndicated article, and add, on his own account, ac-count, that keeping skin white is better bet-ter than to let it become covered with whiskey blotches. Mr. Runyon blames what he calls the failure of women to respond to the war effort upon the "remissness of the leaders lead-ers of their, sex in showing the way." "If some of the prominent women of the day," he goes on to say, "had lunged forward, it would have been an inspiring example to the rank and file." He suggests that such leaders might have "marshalled big parades of females into defense plants." He goes on to say in contrast that "hundreds of thousands" of prominent promi-nent men have offered their services to the wartime effort; industrial chieftains, famous actors and journalists, jour-nalists, doctors, movie directors and producers, and members of Mrs. Luce's own house of representatives. representa-tives. Men Are Drafted. This sort of talk makes me indignant; in-dignant; it seems to me unworthy of one of our top journalists. In the first place, men are drafted, and drafted with them is all the glory of uniforms, uni-forms, marching, flags, music, the excitement and change so dear to youth. Just how large our armies and navies would be if they were composed only of male volunteers is a question, you know, and I know, many a stalwart lad who is safely doing something here at home when he might well be in the ranks. The notable lack of enthusiasm in Canada's men for overseas service is causing that government grave concern. It is not entirely of their own volition that our fighting men have been flung to all the danger spots of the world. It is the fashion now to speak slightingly of our nurses, to lament publicly that more of them do not volunteer for army and navy service. The strange thing about this crticism is that when a call was sent out for 40,000 nurses little more than a year ago, 72,000 volunteered, volun-teered, and 42,000 were actually accepted. ac-cepted. There has been no call since until now, and because response to it is somewhat slow, the whole profession pro-fession suffers disrepute. The real and obvious answer to such critics and Mrs. Luce and Mr. Runyon is, of course, that women are not, never have been and never will be, as free as men to follow their desires, in war or in peace. There are close to 40 million homes in America; less than one-third of 1 per cent of these homes about 1 in 300, is managed without a woman. wom-an. Women cook, wash, clean, raise children, teach in schools; children are their supreme responsibility, husbands and homes and children need them. War is the abnormal, the extraneous thing; wifehood, motherhood, homes, are the indispensable indis-pensable essentials of all civilizations. civiliza-tions. To be sure, certain idle women do drift about to afternoon bars and lounges, accumulating tha aforementioned afore-mentioned "whiskey blotches." But the percentage of these women U very low; perhaps they are mental- "Their supreme responsibility." I HOMEMAKING COMES FIRST By the natural organization of life, women are the home-makers. home-makers. It is foolish to prate about "home front morale" and then expect women in numbers to leave their homes and children and join the W ACs, or get into factories. True, millions of women have responded to the call of national na-tional duty, without any compulsion, com-pulsion, and have enlisted in the auxiliary services, nurses' corps, or have gone into war plants. Most women, however, cannot can-not desert their first responsibility, responsi-bility, the care of their children. chil-dren. They canot go to war, or to work, without neglecting the welfare of the next generation. As Miss Norris points out, they are doing a far greater service to the nation by quietly taking tak-ing care of their homes than they could in some form of war work. Many mothers are giving every spare moment to the Red Cross, or some other service as it is.There are few slackers among A merican women, wom-en, even though they do not wear uniforms and carry arms. ly, physically, spiritually of a type that would make them practically useless anyway. Highest Standard Ever. The great mass of our women maintains a higher standard than women have ever maintained in the world before. It is a standard of decency, de-cency, honesty, devotion to home and husband and children; eagerness eager-ness to serve them, to prepare endless end-less meals, wash inexhaustible dishes, gather small pencils and rubbers, rub-bers, telephone teachers, push a perambulator per-ambulator to market, decide anxiously anxi-ously between lessening stores of fruits and meat, go home hot and weary to put the lunch potatoes in to bake, to sterilize the baby's bottles, bot-tles, to mop up the front hallway, to carry a tray upstairs to a sickroom and to go on with it, day after day, early morning until late at night. These things must be done, and it is women who must do them, and women who do do them. A man may lock his office for a week, a month, he may close it for a whole year and be off overseas. Nobody suffers except perhaps himself, in his pocket, i But a woman may not lock two small babies in a perfectly safe room for an hour without deadly risk. She may not neglect the dish-pan dish-pan for one day. There are 31? items, according to recent calculations, calcula-tions, that she must see supplied, refreshed, re-freshed, refrigerated, heated, dusted, dust-ed, smoothed, washed, ironed and starched, every day of her life. Her husband will not wear rumpled shirts to the office; her children must not go about in wet shoes; her soup must be skimmed for government fats; her tin cans washed and flattened; Her Red Cross dues paid; the six o'clock baths for Betty and Junior, their supper, sup-per, the table-setting, the dinner-getting, the five minutes attention to her own appearance, may not be neglected, not one single day. When any man's work is as vital as that of the humblest wife and mother, then It will be time to talk of the "remissness" of women in war service. |