WOMEN'S FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 207, 1 September 1932, Page 12

WOMEN'S FORUM.

"WE'RE ALL ODD!" Everybody, we are told, ial lop-sided! It will be a. shock to a pretty girl to be told that her eyes are odd, and that one eye-brow is higher than the other! But facts are stubborn things. Her only consolation is that the rule is without exceptions. The sight of the two eyes in the same head also varies; and the ears are unequal in their power of hearing. A scientist has declared that only six per cent of the people whose ears he tested could hear as well with one ear as they could with the. other. He thinks that the fault may be the result of sleeping on one side. He does not eay, however, whether the ear we protect by lying on it is the better or the woree. The ears on the same head also differ considerably in size and contour, and in elevation. This rule of lop-sidedness applies to every limb as well as to every feature. For instance, one leg is shorter than the other. The two sides of the hu.:ian body differ the one from the other in every particular. They are governed by two lobes of -the brain. The right lobe rules the left side of the body; the left the right. Usually the two halves of the body differ in healthfulnese, the power to combat disease, and, consequently, in strength. The right side is commonly the best developed. WOMEN AND SMOKING. "When we see a woman smoke a cigarette, we think that the bottom has dropped out of the Ten Commandments; but why shouldn't she smoke t" asks the general secretary to the Baptist World Alliance (the Rev. J. H. llushbrooke, D.D.) who was in Adelaide for the Baptist Assembly, eays an Australian paper. "After all, if it is not morally wrong for a man to smoke, how can it be morally wrong for a woman to smoke 1" continued Dr. llushbrooke. "The trouble with many of us is that we tend to confuse our personal taste with our ethics. I don't like to see women smoke myself. But that is just a matter of taste. Smoking is a purely superficial custom, and is not in conflict with morality. The same applies to other offshoots of modernism. Frankly, modern youth, to-day is just as it was in my youth. It is one of the diseases of advancing age to belittle youth—to find mistakes and shortcomings, and to magnify them. I have been told —I don't know if it be true —that the very first cuneiform inscription deciphered— written thousands of years ago, started off with a lament that the young men of that day were not the boys their fathers were! Which looks as if it is a very old complaint indeed. Modern youth is audacious,- but its genuine idealism is not a particle below that of the boys and girls of my day." A HARDENING HOLIDAY. Because he believes that the youngsters of to-day are too soft, and that those who really want adventure cannot find it, Surgeon-Commander G. Murray Levick, R.N., who was medical officer in Captain Scott's last expedition to the Antarctic, has formed an Exploring Club for senior public schoolboys. The first twenty members will leave England this month for Northern Finland, and it is hoped in future years to take a party further North, towards" the Pole. "The idea of forming such a club has been in my mind for some time," said Dr. Murray Levick. "Modern youngsters are tending to become soft, and the usual Irotel holiday at the seaside is too 'civilised.' I want to see the summer holidays used for making the members of the club really fit and hard by a vigorous open-air life The country in the district we are visiting is absolutely wild, and we shall live in the open. There will be no special hardships this first year, hpwever, and our trip to Finland, which will last about five weeks, will cost no more than an ordinary seaside holiday."