Sweaters In Summer

From The Times, April 5th 1917

SWEATERS IN SUMMER. 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 

Sir, — Not less than 1,000 letters lave reached me lately asking what comforts the writers shall knit for the men during the summer.  Will you give me room to answer?

Well, I have been asked by authority to give your readers a clear lead as to what is wanted, and I know I ask a hard-thing in doing it.  It seems that last year, we over-estimated the interval between the last cold night of spring and the first chills of autumn, and under-estimated the time required to get the things across the world in these days.  What is wanted is a vast store of warm comforts by—don't be startled—the end of July.  I am told that heavy knitting throughout the summer is contrary to custom and comfort.  Well, if so, we must dispense with both.  We can't compete with the men in those things whose daily story is our grief and pride abroad, but we can do what we don't want to do, and stick out a long, dull, un-timely job at home.

I think so gravely of what I have written above that I had almost forgotten to say how grateful I am for the continued kindness shown this venture during the past winter.  I was obliged to ask your readers for 10,000 sweaters in a month, and they came; and 10,000 mufflers to accompany them, and there they were.  The total number of sweaters received here to date is 38,106, and of supplementary comforts 34,223.  I feel especially grateful to the men in hospital who have been mindful of their brothers in the field, to the kind maids in many households who have given lavishly of their perhaps not too lavish spare time, and to two venerable ladies, pioneers of all good effort for soldier and sailor, who have found time and inclination to help this venture of to-day on behalf of the men they have served for half a century.

Part of your kindness is to keep the sudatorium smiling.  The palm for ingenuity is surely borne by the lady who left the germ of a muffler and a ball of wool in a railway waiting room with a message appended asking the next stranded lady to add a few inches to the work—whence a capital muffler arrived here in due season.  But all my sympathy goes out to the self-sacrifice of those male relatives commandeered for the hateful process of trying on.  Listen to this: "My father's head, which is very small and quite bald, seldom comes through the neck."  Oh, Sir, for these too infrequent triumphs my good wishes, and for the dreadful protracted occultations my sincere sympathy and the assurance that we now "pick up 76 round the neck."  But all round there has been a marked improvement in knitting.  My remarks on snakes' nightgowns did produce, per contra, a small crop of elephants' cummerbunds, but the real thing is now normal.

To recur to the one thing of importance.  With a restricted Press, it will. greatly help if ladies will make a point of passing the word along that sweaters, mufflers, helmets, mittens, and socks will be wanted in very large quantities by August 1, and that they should be sent, when the time draws near, either to the Voluntary Organizations Depôts throughout the country, or to the D.G.V.O.’s Depôt at 45, Horseferry-road, S.W., or to me as below.  I have plenty of patterns here if ladies would write for them, but I am afraid all the wool I have left will be wanted for men knitting in hospital.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN PENOYRE. 

8. King’s Bench Walk, Inner Temple, E.C.4.

April 4.