DECLINE OF SOCIAL HUMBUG

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 6, 8 January 1916, Page 16

DECLINE OF SOCIAL HUMBUG

"Prominent among our gains is freedom from social humbug," says The Times. "We ought, of course, ourselves to have freed ourselves from social humbug, without the help of the Germans; but the release, how it has come, is grateful. There is no longer any need to pretend to be richer than we are. Everyone is desperately poor, or, for his country's sake, must spend as little on himself as if he were desperately poor. And, with' a jolly shamelessness, we all admit our condition.

"Fifteen months ago there were circles in which the man or woman who said 'I can't afford it,' was stared at. Only bad manners or stinginess could explain the use of such a phrase; while to say, 'I'm hard,up,' meant simply, ' I have been spending too much upon my pleasures or my vices,' and amounted almost to a double entendre. Now everybody says it, and there is no' more point for any of us in pretending to means that we have not got than there is for the Indian civilian, whose salary is known to a rupee by ;all his fellows and his "fellows' wives. ■ ■ •

"Between pur spells at the hospital, the recreation tent, the refugee establishment, in our leisure moments between the daily task and our special constable's duty, our yolunteer Reserve drill, or our little private war jobs, we see the people that we want to see; and we have no time for dressing up and pounding round after people that we do not want to see. ..';."

"In a hundred little ways we are more ' honest and . more free than we were; and we may as well make the most of them. We need not any more pretend to like books or plays or, music that bore or offend us. We may wear— yes! and in Bond-street itself —exactly the clothes that we find best suited to our work and pur persons. There is no need to smoke cigarettes (which we do not like) just because we happen to be in Piccadilly. There, on the other side of the street, is a 'brass hat,' red tabs and all, with a pipe in his mouth.

"Humbug will come back, no doubt. Perhaps it will take the dangerous form of pretending that we were much more subtle, and sinful., before the war than we really were—of being ashamed of ourselves for having enjoyed the cay days and nights of the old world. But there is no need to worry about that yet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will see to it that the simple life is not all affectation for a ver.y long time to come."