DECLINE OF MORALS

Evening Star, Issue 19000, 23 July 1925, Page 9

DECLINE OF MORALS

lIWBESTY AND GAMBLING

DRESS. PICTURES, AIID BRIDGE 'Unhealthy tendencies among the youth of to-day received attention from Canon Percival James, while, preaching in ht, Mary’s Cathedral on Sunday evening last (says an Auckland paper). .He spoke especially of immodesty in dress, both on the street and at the beaches, of the salacious trend of modern lictiou and pictures, and of bridge playing for money among girls. “A disclosure 1, made to the A [others’ Union,” said the canon, “has been reported in the public Press. I am very glad it has been published. I. was speaking of facts which bad come to my own knowledge, and which 1 had investigated with parents, some of whom are listening to me now, and I. have received a mass of letters which show that many share the estimate which I have formed about what is going on among the children.” .Is there not too much reason to fear inuiioraliity below the surface when wo liil see. immodesty stalking abroad uakoA and unashamed in the light of day? “Modesty used to bo thought the crown and "glory of womanhood. It is an unpopular word to-day. Look at the pictures of women in the magazines and illustrated papers. A large proportion of them arc immodest in dress or attitude, and that is apparently the only reason for publishing them. The public wants them, and gets what it wants. “Again, there are recurrent protests against immodesty in dress, but the evil seems to be increasing. .Decent people who live near popular bathing beaches toll us they dislike to leave their homes or to let their children go out on Sunday in the summer. Boys and girls, young men and young women, as near to complete nudity as they can be without rendering themselves liable to prosecution, spend the whole day, not in the water, but in sporting about and lying about together. Modesty is the priceless possession of boy and girl, of man and maid. If they are robbed of their beautiful natural reserve a great safeguard is gone. This is a matter lor women. The united action of the head mistresses of the great girls’ secondary schools in Auckland could do much to remedy this.” A great part of modern fiction ought never to find its way into the hands of children, continued Canon James. The main danger was not from books actually obscene and salacious, but from the greater number of books just “ on the Hue,” which could not be condemned ns utterly foul, but which smudged with coarse fingers the sacred things of love and sox and marriage. They showed human nature at its very worst.

There was some rather wild talk about motion pictures at present. Some, of course, were poisonous, and lie was glad the protests against indecent picture posters seemed likely to bo elfective. It was said that the films themselves were not always so bad as the posters would indicate. What a commentary upon popular taste! The ad\ ertisemout must be more attractively suggestive than the picture itself, but the main objection to the picture show v/ns that it was mostly sheer rubbish. While pictures remained on their present plane it was for parents to guard their children against any pernicious in'.lm nces.

Tho.'o was another thing to which Canon James said ho wished to direct attention - that in Auckland it had become the fashionable thing for girls to piny bridge for money. Not long ago a mother gave a birthday present to a girl who was; just leaving school. It vns a “ bridge nurse,” in which to put h-e u.,,1 am l from which to pay her losses at bridge. In another case a young girl had been forbidden by helps rents to' play for money,, but the motiicr now said this prohibition must 1.0 rc-moiod, “because if she does not play for money she cannot have a good time.” It was said that young people could m»t even play a round of golf unless tfieri was a stake upon it.