"CALL A HALT"

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21656, 14 December 1935, Page 2

"CALL A HALT"

CONVENTIONS A SAFEGUARD \ / “I feel that we women are to-day, at the porting of the ways; many of our pet conventions are being voted old fashioned, out-of-date, and yet those very conventions have, for years, been a safeguard and friend to the rising generation,” said Miss Helen Gibson, at the Rangi-ruru ceremony yesterday morning, A new freedom of speech, of conduct, and of thought was, she said, apparent, a freedom which, as a mere pose, was often grossly exaggerated. The change today was, on the whole, she thought, towards a healthier condition, provided a halt was called at the right position. Just as women’s clothing to-day was freer and less hampering, making young people fitter in body, so were their minds healthier and less restricted, but some young women were going on to a stark nude state of body that was repulsive and detrimental, and it was the task of older folk to prevent their minds from getting to a position of starkness and lack of idealism. ' On behalf of girls on the verge of womanhood, she pleaded with the younger mothers of to-day, who. in their youth had been freed of some of the old restrictions, to call a halt. “At the risk of being called prudish,” Miss Gibson said, “watch and guide your girls through the critical stage of their lives, when they are so anxious to dash forward, and gain more freedom by throwing off still further safeguards.” She suggested that mothers should share their daughter’s interests, take part in their amusements, get to know their friends, arrange their mental food as carefully as their bodily food, let them read good literature, see beautiful works of art, and nature, hear good music, use discrimination in the choice of entertainments, and so guide their taste until they were of an age to choose wisely for themselves. To the girls who this year were throwing off the yoke of school discipline, she would say, “Suffer gladly the guidance of your parents or set for yourself a strict code of manners end morals to serve as your protection.” There was, Miss Gibson concluded, a definite purpose in each girl’s life, and she would remind them that to achieve that purpose they must fortify themselves against those influences which would side-track them, and, as an antidote to those influences, they must set before themselves the highest ideals, and follow them, heedless of the enticements of the ultramodern ftshion and the sneers of the cynic.