DRAWING THE LINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 292, 10 December 1929, Page 6

DRAWING THE LINE.

How difficult it is to define the phrase "select social circles" is shown by the fact that though an actress in England may be admitted to the Royal enclosure at Ascot, which is supposed to be the most exclusive precinct anywhere, she cannot marry an officer in the Guards or the Household Cavalry without causing her husband to resign his com mission. An actress may be created a Dame of the British Empire, or sit in the House of Commons, or marry into the peerage and become a countess or a duchess, but the Guards are quite too select to be contaminated by any connection with the stage. Yet it is possible for a commission in the Guards to be obtained by the sons of people whose sole claim I to distinction is the fact that they have made money on a large scale. The day was when the stage was associated with companies of "strolling players" who were catalogued in the eyes of the law. as coming under the general heading of "rogues and vagabonds." As late as the close of last century it was considered such a loss of social standing to marry an actress, however talented and famous that actress might be, that an English Lord Chancellor paid £10,000 damages in a.suit for breach of promise brought by. an actress against his eldest son sooner than see. his family connected with the stage. Perhaps the Guards do well to cling to such remnants of their ancient prestige as still remain to them. Before the purchase of commissions was abolished an officer in the Guards ranked, owing to the cost of his coinmission, a step above officers in other regiments. This, together with many former privileges, he no longer enjoys. The Guardsman, therefore, cannot be blamed for holding fast to such 'social exclusiveness as may come from drawing the line at actresses. Theso old cherished traditions are dying one by one. They still survive in the army and in the cricket field as well as in one or two of the London clubs. When even archdeacons have married wives who were formerly connected with the stage surely the officers in the Guards might well consider an attitude that dates back to conditions as they may have been long ago, but which certainly do not obtain to-day. To open regimental commissions to the power of the purse and deny the right of dramatic talent to any matrimonial alliance with the gorgeous person holding such commission savours of the humorous and the absurd.' —W.M.