Woman demands position on front

The fighting spirit of her forefathers has impelled a young New Zealand girl to write to the Defence Minister and offer herself for active service abroad.

''I have been intending for a good while to write to you on this very serious subject,'' she states in her letter to the Minister.

''I am very anxious,'' she continues, ''to know whether I and others can go to the war and fight in the trenches, and I am positive we would not disgrace our country. If only you would give the girls a chance what a name little New Zealand would get - sending its girls to fight! People would say we were mad, but we would soon prove our worth, and put those admirable shirkers in the shade.''

She suggests taking a suitable number of country girls and putting them through military training of a severe kind.

There would be good results.

She herself was a big girl, 20 years old, weighing 10 stone, and not afraid of anything; could ride almost anything, and had done a little shooting.

One brother was away at the front and another was going in the 9th Reinforcements.

She pleaded for a chance and threatened to pester the Minister unless it was given her.

She had intended getting a healthy young fellow to pass the doctor, and then go herself in his name - and she would yet, if not allowed to go!

''Mother is quite agreeable, and tells me every day she wishes she could send me ... I would go for nothing a day - I would do that much for dear old New Zealand.''

The Minister sent a sympathetic reply, appreciating the splendid spirit prompting the girl, but saying the regulations were against her.

He also didn't want their only remaining privilege to pass away from our young men - that of fighting for the women and children of the Empire.

 Mr Mark Cohen, who has just returned from a visit to America, was entertained at luncheon yesterday at the Young Men's Christian Association rooms by the Otago Expansion League, of the publicity department of which he was for some time chairman.

The gathering was presided over by Mr J. Hutchison (editor of the Otago Daily Times), and the attendance, which was large, contained many leading citizens and business men.

Mr Hutchison, in introducing Mr Cohen, said that Mr Cohen had the advantage of being the only Dunedinite who had during the currency of the war visited and returned from the great neutral nation with which we were most closely allied by bonds of blood, literature, and tradition.

Mr Cohen was the first resident of Dunedin whom the Expansion League had entertained.

On behalf of the league he welcomed Mr Cohen back, and expressed the hope that he would be spared for many years to assist it with his guidance and counsel, both by voice and pen.

Mr Cohen, on rising, was received with applause. He spoke at considerable length, the major part of his remarks being devoted to the attitude of America to the war.

Much of what he said was of a very trenchant nature, and some of the anecdotes he told had a marked effect upon his hearers.

Mr Cohen had spoken with Mr Roosevelt, whose attitude to the allied cause is generally understood.

All of what Mr Roosevelt had told him he could not repeat, the statements being practically confidential, but he could assure his hearers that had Mr Roosevelt been in the President's chair instead of Dr Wilson, America would at the present time have been standing shoulder to shoulder with the Allies in the trenches facing the enemy . . . - ODT, 24.11.1915. .

 


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