MODERN SPEED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 7

MODERN SPEED.

It is continually being aslic why the women of to-day are not tlu dame a-s the women of yesterday. The answer is that we are /exactly the (same as ever (declares Lady Sybil. Grant in the “Daily Express.”)) It is only because women arc adaptable that they have accustomed themselves to living at top speed. There is nothing so remarkable about woman as her adaptability, excepting her powers of endurance. The same powers of endurance that enabled her to have an annual baby for many years in early Victorian days are now exercised in living at extreme mental and physical tension —almost literally reproducing life upon the films. This speed, however, has been invariably set by man. Glance backwards, and you will agree. Man invented the post-chaise, then trains, and then motor cars. Women shared all the initial experiments, which must have been sometimes boring, always inconvenient, without the fun of driving coach or chaise —simply inside and being held up by highwaymen. Then trains. Did women have the fun of driving the engine, clipping tickets, or ordering people about with flags and whistles? Not they ! Theirs the passive pai’t of the sai’dine in its tin. But, for all this, they had to speed up their lives to suit the new mode_ of transport, rush to catch these trains, live more ixxtensely, wear out more, clothes, and at greater speed. _ As regards the vexed _ question o± cocktails, you would think, to hear some people talk, that women had invented them. Here is a private theory to account for women ever taking to them. If you pause to consider, cocktails and universal dancing burst simultaneously into fashion. Before them mostly men danced who danced well, but, with what has been called ‘‘the advent of Ethiopian gymnastics, every male, whatever his age or efficiency, took to the floor, and—in order to brace herself against being lamed, trodden underfoot, and generally mangled—women took to cocktails. To return to the main issue. Woman was not asked if she wanted the motor car. She just had to key_ up her already tense existence to suit the male. At a moment’s notice she had to collect •clothes for the kaleidoscopic programme. A telephone call might result in a sudden round of golf, a dash to London, a race meeting, winding up with dinner, show, and dancing at various places, one after another, during the same night. Napoleon himself could not have needed a better head for organising. Finally men, almost inadvertently, invented the film. I say “almost inadvertently,” because I do not think any one realised at the time how this would transform the whole world. I do not think anyone quite grasps, even now, how much films influence the community at large, and women in particuar. You watch a film, and gradually it takes possession of You yourself are struggling upon an ice floe taking part in the singularly foul driving that seems to distinguish chariot racing. You yourself are the hero, or rather the heroine, or the vamp. No play makes you feel quite like that. Then you come 'out, half-dazed, back to consciousness, and, if you look round and watch your friend or any strangers you will soon pick out a dozen who walk. and talk like screen people —with that rather jerky action, and sentences like captions. Gestures, too, those quick, sharp movements, broken off, “cut' out”; and the real firm smile— abrupt, dazzling, but become suddenly something else with equal suddenness. When a man hears women announce in the high speed, matter of fact, rather flat tone now prevalent the advent of twins ten days ago, or a recent return from New Borneo, or a quick ( change marriage, when, in jus youth, such events would be respectively, followed by weeks upon the sofa and years of reminiscence and anecdotage, and endless faipily councils, let it be remembered that it is this culminating triumph of inventive speed, this superintensive, abrupt, matter of fact film influence that set the type of women to-, day—and for that his sex is entirely responsible.