"At our most swagger club recently, an altogether charming member entertained a party of influential women in order to interest them in her latest – rather startling – propaganda.

"She has made the appalling discovery that Victoria simply reeks with well-to-do bachelors over military age who do absolutely nothing to help the Empire in this great crisis [the Great War].

"She declares that the highest duty of the bachelor of means, who cannot go to the front, is to marry and found a family. The downright common sense of this cannot be denied, for we all know population is our greatest need.

"The reason for their being bachelors she scathingly stigmatised as 'absolutely nothing but ingrained double-barrelled selfishness'. It is her intention to circularise bachelors on this subject, and failing success by appeal to their sense of Patriotism, to move politicians to bring effective legislation into the campaign – to tax these marriage shirkers into matrimony."

Elsewhere in this column, "Clio" harped on the popular wartime theme of never buying anything made by the Huns.

"Quite lately, I heard of local ladies who, on the outbreak of war, started making toys. Their efforts have grown into a large toy making industry. May they go on and prosper and forever oust from this country the shoddy, gaily-painted, stuck-together-with-glue, cheap stuff with which Germany inundated us every Xmas. Australian-made toys for Australian children, please."