AUSTRIAN REVOLT

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 145, 21 June 1934, Page 17

AUSTRIAN REVOLT

OUTWITTING MRS. GRUNDY

"Mrs. Grundy" had a busy day on the Vienna1 bathing beaches recently. The indignation of the once merry Viennese at restrictions on their amusements became so great that plain-clothes police had to be called in to stop a "dance not' with threats of twenty-four hours' imprisonment," says the "Daily Telegraph."

Owing to the great heat the 'bathing beaches had a record .number of visitors for so early in the year. On Gansehaufel Island, as already reported, the sexes are now sternly separated at the gates by orders of the new regime in Austria. But GSOO bathers pajd for admission in the expectation of enjoying themselves as in the' past. Husbands and wives were at first indignant at being made to pay for two cabins. :

The real trouble began, however, over the prohibition of dancing. Thousands of bathers crowded' round the bandstand and shouted in chorus. "We want dance music again. Down with the new Puri^ tans." They were told that the ClericalFascist Government had forbidden 'dancing on the bathing beaches. Thereupon the bathers began to make their own dance music by whistling popular tunes and dancing to them. Plainclothes police were sent for and broke into the merry, crowds, shouting, "Anyone who refuses to stop dancing will be arrested on the spot and imprisoned for twenty-four hours."' .

The bathers moved off to the meadows and, under the guise of gymnastics, began leaping about to the rhythm of old folkdances. •

On othet parts of the beach inspectors of morals got to work on bathing costumes with an imaginary, if not an actual, tape measure. Three women were cautioned for wearing too flimsy garments, and other women in divided costumes were ordered. off.