PARSON IN SHORTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 15

PARSON IN SHORTS.

DRESS REFORM ADVOCATE. OUTSPOKEN SERMON. Clad in a scarlet or orange shirt with brief khaki shorts, a boy scout's hat, tennis shoes, and with socklcse legs astride a bicycle, the Rev. 11. E. E. Hayes, of Mernda, Victoria, is a militant apostle of dress reform. He said last week that he invariably wore these clothes —sometimes varying the colour of the shirt—on hot days while visiting liis parishioners on a bicycle;

On a recent Sunday, from the pulpit of St. Stephen's Anglican Church, Mernda, Mr. Hayes declared that human society was fettered by a clothes convention, which was a survival of ancient, •prudish ideas. Dealing with aspects of the problem of moral anil physical evil, Mr. Hayes said that the old Genesis story of the' Creation indicated that the ancients, who originated the Scriptures, believed that clothes, work and childbearing wore evils imposed as a punishment i'or the original sin of Adam and Eve.

"We liave been so influenced by the clothiw complex," lie added, "that many of. our modern laws are based o;i prudish conceptions, which are a survival of these old ideas. All the outcry against nudity in civilised man is due to prudish forms of morality.

"The youth movements in" Europe today which embrace scanty costumes and nude colonies are a move in the right direction. It shows that they are sroing back to naturalness, which, if properly controlled, is healthy. The reaction against clothing is an indication of the reality of the ancient feeling that nudity wak a conditon of 'paradise/" Mr. Hayes claimed that drastic reform in clothing was needed in Australia.