MASKS, BUT NOT FOR FUN

Evening Star, Issue 22596, 13 March 1937, Page 2

MASKS, BUT NOT FOR FUN

“ In the days of our youth the wear-* ing of masks foamed one of the fin© diversions,” says the ‘ Northern Daily Telegraph,’ of Blackburn, in a homily leader on the new gas mask factory in the town. “ What fun it was by donning a flimsy vizor to turn yourself into a nigger or a pantaloon, or a Mephistopholian ogre, and how th© elders ministered to the riotous entertainment by their pretence of mirth or fear. And now civilisation, the thing whose praises are so lauded, has swung full circle and brought us back again to masks, given another of those retrograde experiences described as ‘ getting off where you got on,’ and set thoughtful minds to the counting of costs and wondering whether the modern mask should be accepted as a symbol of intellectual and creative progress or of spiritual decline. Certainly we find little cause for pride that in this year of grace the children of men should thus be driven to seek scientific protection against man’s inhumanity.