HATS AND POLITICS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 29 December 1925, Page 9

HATS AND POLITICS.

THE NEW ORDER IN TURKEY. ABOLITION OF THE FEZ. On the eve of celebrating the third anniversary of the proclamation of its Republic, Turkey made the wearing of the fez illegal, and the Grand National Assembly came together top-hatted and tail-coated (states The Times). They are mobbing men and Moslems now for the wearing of the fez, and Turkish hatters, making necessity the mother of invention, are turning out hats, creditable indeed in shape, but of materials “more appropriate for a Christmas cracker or a seaside comedian.” “Duty before decency,” as the bo’sun said; “progress before dignity,” says Turkey. A hat, even of paper, has a brim or a peak—something which, in appearance if not in fact, prevents the wearer from touching the ground with his forehead in the old, benighted Turkish fashion. No giaur touches the ground with his forehead; the giaurs are civilised ; therefore, who wears a hat with a brim or a peak is civilised. The logic of it is plain; and the latest order only continues tire march of progress of which the first external signs were given at least five months ago. In June certain persons were allowed at certain times to go bareheaded, and the senior Judge of Turkey even found a precedent (it had to do with the milking of Christian cows which feared the fez) for the wearing of hats. In July shaving and peaked caps were made obligatory in the services and in the police. In August admission was forced from a mufti that form of costume is without religious significance. In October, the fez was forbidden. The night watchmen go from house to house searching for the accursed thing to destroy it; and Christmas revellers and seaside comedians march forward to civilisation. The head dress has always enjoyed .more political significance than any other part of man’s attire. The fez itself was once a symbol of progress; a century ago Sultan Mahmud 11., the Reformer, imposed it upon all save •ecclesiastics, to mark the breach that he had. made with tradition. Before that the Emperor Paul of Russia, who was charitably supposed to be mad, forbade the wearing of round hats, which he felt to be signs or causes of revolutionary opinion. When members of our own Labour Cabinet appeared in “morning dress” it was not the tails to their coats, it was their silk hats which raised the fury of their more subversive supporters; and in one politician of the day eccentricity in the choice of hats has been suspected as a symptom of instability in statesmanship. The collars of Mr Gladstone, the Oxford trousers of our young iconoclasts, mav have their notoriety; but the head dress is the continuing symbol of opinion. Nothing less than a heat wave in the Red Sea induced the “Just So Stories” Parsee to take off his more-than-Oriental-splendour hat. And yet, in England at any rate, the hat is never free from a touch of the comic. “Do you see anything ridiculous in my hat, Sir?” “Nothing but .your head, Sir!” —the old joke is neat, but it shirks the plain truth that hats generally, and any narticular hat, with or without a head in it, even the very word “hat,” are apt to raise a smile. Comedians know this well; perhaps in the Tell legend insulting Gessler knew it when he set upon a pole, as an object of obeisance, a hat.. Let. the Chinese cut off their pigtails, and the joke still grows stale. But—conturbabantur Constantinopolitan innumerabililvus sollicitudinibus; and now they] have gone and added to them the difficulty of choosing a hat. Sympathise as we may, admire their determination to lie “civilised” as we may, it is hard to be wholly serious about these signs of progress. Dignity and romance seem to turn away and to go with the fez down the ways of secrecy and of regret. We may imagine the friends of the old order wearing the fez us a night-cap, taking it reverently out of a secret drawer and dropping upon it tears of forbidden affection. And the hat, the ridiculous hat—topper, bowler, 1 Homburg. be it what it will —spreads like a disease or a weed, reducing all the world to sameness.