The number of organizations exclusively composed of women that exist nowadays is really bewildering. It will soon be quite distinguished not to belong to any of them, as it once was never to have seen "Charlie's Aunt." But attention is certainly due to the golden jubilee of the International Council of afler a few hours.
These sunburns suffering frequently cause with a rise in temp:
nature, and if the sufferer is a child he may become listless and [fretful with no appetite. In other words there are symptoms of the general poisoning of the system which follows extensive burns and this condition should always be treated as something quite important Women, representing national coun-oils in 37 countries and a total membership of 40,000,000, which is to be celebrated in Edinburgh in July.
In the long agenda of the meeting the point of most general interest is the so-called maids' minimum," or h Women Organize Screens covered with cheesecloth help to keep dust and dirt from blowing into pantries, storerooms, and in doors and windows near the ground. charter prepared for the domestic servants' union which is being formed by the Trade Union Congress. This charter lays down conditions as to time off, overtime, friends, wages. food, accommodation and the annual holiday. Minimum wages for resident maids are fixed at 8s. 6d, for girls under 16, and 10s for girls over. Which in fact strikes one às exceedingly moderate, and I for one should like to know where girls can be got for so little.
The chairman of the Maids' Minimum Committee says in an interview that mistresses are "absolutely terrifed at the decision of the T.U.C. to form a union of domestic servant: That is rubbish. Ninety per cent of mistresses would cheerfully grant the minimum I have mentioned if they could be sure of getting maids in return. And if the projected Union affords some court of appeal, as I believe it is intended to do, when maids "down tools" and walk out for a whim, the mistresses will welcome it enthusiastically. cee Perfect. Landladies Meanwhile another aspect of the servant, at least of the domestic que: tion, is amusingly illustrated in the announcement that 400 soldiers now finishing their training at the Army Vocational Training Centre at Hounslow and about to re-enter civi-lion life, are looking for 400 perfect Jendladies, Some might retort, in a paraphrase of a certain cynical comment by Disraeli on one of Gladstone's speeches, "There are not 400 perfect landladies in all the world, certainly not im Hounslo However, the 400 soldiers have deputed scouts to beat up the neighbourhood. Surprising offers have been reported "board and lodging, light, laundry, mending, usually the radio, in one house even a billiard table, all for from 17s to 22s.
Several women professed an eagerness to treat their soldier lodgers as their own sons. Does it awake a little mistrust? Would one not rather prefer, as more natural, the many women who say: "The house looks terrible now, I've been gardening; or "Naturally the house will be better than this, I had to let it go this week."
But since new trade unions are being formed, a good idea would be a Lodgers Union. I do not quite know what they would do when driven to striking against the landladies: perhaps camp in Hyde Park with the sheep between the times of marching through the West End with banners and carrying petitions to the Houses of Parliament. There are of course exceptions. But generally The Dowager Marchioness oj Reading (centre) with (on ner left) Mrs. Montague Norman (wife of the Governor of the Bank of England), inspecting a few of the many thousands of application s for enrolment which have reached the Westminster headquarters of the Women's Voluntary Services, which at the request of the Government and with the ce-operation of women's voluntary organization recently issued a call for half a million women between the ages of 17 and 65 for A.R.P. and defence duties.
Lady Reading is chairman of the Women's Voluntary Services. and the Duke of Wellington were both beautiful exponents, so in much earlier centuries there was a Spanish style, which killed itself, like Gothic architecture, from sheer exuberance. The old High German characters then became the fashion; we might be using them still, if the Renaissance Italians had not gone back to Charlemagna in search of something simpler.
Looking at the 14th and 15th century MSS—there are plenty in old English churches including some by Henry VIII, who, whatever you may think of him otherwise, was a first fass scholar—one is struck by their exquisite precision and the extreme difficulty of deciphering them. But this I suppose is merely a question of practice and of being used to the abbreviations they used. Nowada it is said that writing is a dying art. One cannot say that the typewriter is killing it, for there were famous men before the typewriting days, j Cunningham Grahame, for instanc and George Saintsbury, who wrote atrocious hands; but it is undoubtedly helping to do so. 1n America Where I suppose more typewriters are used than anywhere, the classical form of writing is e: romely pretty but the average Amer an writes villainously.
It is surely a pity if handwriting is not well practised and used for there is a certain discipline in it which makes for clarity and terseness Habitual use of the typewriter tend io verbosity and bad spelling.
On one point I would pass an Act of Parliament—that people should n their names legibly. or go to prison till they had learnt to do so.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.