DANCING AND MORALS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 122, 26 May 1930, Page 6

DANCING AND MORALS.

Your correspondent Dr. Mildred Staler is certainly full of suggestions for reforming our dance halls. It is time, however, that something was said to thin down the black paint with which theso "dens of iniquity" are painted. In this era of modern dancing one can scarcely pick up a newspaper without reading criticism of the environment of cabarets and dance halls, and I venture to state that such criticism is in nine cases out of ten purely hearsay. To those who have never entered a dance hall, that is to say a hall which" is thrown open to the public for dancing, I would emphatically state that the popular idea that the morals of those young people attending are in any way affected by jazz music, gaiety and the aesthetic thrill resultant from a perfect rhythm, is absolute nonsense. This is a young country with a large juvenile population and the public dance hall should be fostered as a first-grade source of entertainment. I have been dancing for the last ten or so years in. % most of the civilised countries on the face of ™ the earth and I do not believe there is another .-.*,"' country like New Zealand where the of the young are so restricted and misundei> r; > stood. Believe me, you parents who hesitates ■ to allow your daughters to attend the pubfflp dances in your city, there are far, far w'ors'e!" evils than the harmless mingling of the. sexes." HAPPY DAYS.'