There’ll be problems aboot women, dear knows.  There are a’ the lassies whose men wull no come back, like Andy—­whose lads lie buried in a foreign grave.  It’s not for me to talk of the sad problem of the superfluous woman—­the lassie whose life seems to be over when it’s but begun.  These are affairs the present cannot consider properly.  It will tak’ time to show what wall be happening and what maun be done.

But I’m sure that no woman wull give up the opportunity to mak’ a hame, to bring bairns into the world, for the sake of continuing the sort of freedom she’s had during the war.  It wad be like cutting off her nose to do that.

Oh, I ken fine that men wull have to be more reasonable than they’ve been, sometimes, in the past.  Women know more than they did before the war opened the gates of industry to them.  They’ll not be put upon, the way I’m ashamed to admit they sometimes were in the old days.  But I think that wull be a fine thing for a’ of us.  Women and men wull be comrades more; there’ll be fewer helpless lassies who canna find their way aboot without a man to guide them.  But men wull like that—­I can tell ye so, though they may grumble at the first.

The plain man wull have little use for the clinging vine as a wife.  He’ll want the sort of wife some of us have been lucky enough to have even before the war.  I mean a woman who’ll tak’ a real note of his affairs, and be ready to help him wi’ advice and counsel; who’ll understand his problems, and demand a share in shaping their twa lives.  And that’s the effect I’m thinking the war is maist likely to have upon women.  It wall have trained them to self-reliance and to the meeting of problems in a new way.

And here’s anither thing we maun be remembering.  In the auld days a lassie, if she but would, could check up the lad that was courtin’ her.  She could tell, if she’d tak’ the trouble to find oot, what sort he was—­how he stud wi’ those who knew him.  She could be knowing how he did at work, or in business, and what his standing was amang those who knew him in that way.  It was different when a man was courtin’ a lassie.  He could tell little about her save what he could see.

Noo that’s been changed.  The war’s been cruelly hard on women as weel as on men.  It’s weeded them oot.  Only the finest could come through the ordeals untouched—­that was true of the women at hame as of the men on the front line.  And now, when a lad picks out a lassie he’s no longer got the excuses he once had for making a mistake.

He can be finding oot how she did her work while he was awa’ at the war.  He can be telling what those who worked wi’ her thought of her, and whether she was a good, steady worker or not.  He can make as many inquiries aboot her as she can aboot him, and sae they’ll be on even terms, if they’re both sensible bodies, before they start.

And there’s this for the lassies who are thinking sae muckle of their independence.  They’re thinking, perhaps, that they can pick and choose because they’ve proved they can earn their livings and keep themselves.  Aye, that’s true enough.  But the men can do more picking and choosing than before, too!