MRS GRUNDY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1188, 10 December 1924, Page 12

MRS GRUNDY

AN INTERNATIONAL FIGURE. (By John Blunt, in tho Daily Mail.) It appears that a bill is to bo introduced into tho Polish Parliament to prohibit women from wearing low-necked, short-sleeved dresses. I can imagine nothing more likely to make women want to wear such dresses. Old-womanish legislation, which goes contrary to ordinary common sense, is always liablo to promote the “evil” it seeks to suppress. REASON AND LAW. Laws are generally respected because they generally represent tlio opinions of reasonable people. If a Government starts making laws which go counter to public opinion it cannot be surprised if public opinion is inclined to flout these laws. For, after all, the object of laws is to benefit, not to harass, the community. It is very easy, if you possess that typo of mind, to find cause for reproof in the most harmless things. And many people, 1 am afraid, have that type of mind, for Mrs Grundy is far from being dead. Indeed, she is evidently becoming an international as well as a national figure. To Hie lady who rebuked Dr Johnson for putting “naughty words” into his dictionary, the sago cuttingly retorted that sho had evidently been searching- for such words. And his reply holds good to-day with regard to a lot of people who are always looking for evil where no evil is meant.

INTERFERENCE. Tt is a great pity that thero are so many busybodies in the world. Why interfere with other people’s harmless pleasures just, because you happen to disagree with them ? And who gave anybody an inherent right to act as a mentor of the public (asto in dress? Do not all these kill-joys realise that public opinion is quite strong enough to prevent anything really objectionable from becoming fashionable? If I shudder because I see women with bare arms it is a. sign not of public depravity but of my own folly. Half the troubles in the world arise from an evil imagination. If people were left more to their own devices the world would not suffer, because mankind as a whole is sane and sensible. BRAVADO ENCOURAGED. But if wo are constantly being told with regard to trivial things what we can do and what we can’t do, it is only natural that opposition is aroused, and that people are inclined to go further, out. of bravado, than they would go ol their own freo will. This is simply human nature. I do not know what the women ot Poland will do if short sleeves and low dresses are officially banned, but 1 strongly suspect that they will kill any such law by ignoring it in such large miniliers that the authorities will be powerless.