DRESS AND DANCES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 92, 16 March 1927, Page 3

DRESS AND DANCES

THE MODERN WOMAN. ADDRESS BY A OLERIO. AUCKLAND, March 14. “It is the flask, and not the bar, that menaces society to-day,” declared the Rev. Father Macgrath, S.M., in a discourse on “Woman: Her Dress and Her Dances,” given at the Sacred Heart Church, Ponsonby, yesterday; where a mission for women is being conducted by the Marist Fathers. The preacher said he desired to avoid the generalisations and too frequent pessimism with which the subject was often treated. His was a sincere effort to apportion the .blame in an involved social problem, and to give the principles on which a solution should be attempted. “The words of St Paul’s warning, ‘Let your modesty be known to all men, the Lord is nigh,’ could be translated to mean, ‘lt pays to advertise,’ ” said Father Macgrath. Dealing with the question of dress, what he meant by that was it paid every self-respect-ing girl who planned a useful and a wholesome life to advertise her adherence to Divine ideals as a protection against the rakes who to-day’ were E lotting her ruin. Modes of dress could e attractive, but should make the right appeal. Clothes were to protect as well as to please; they were a part of virtue’s armour. Many girls by their, indecently attractive dress were simply advertising themselves “for sale,” and they would go to the lowest bidder.

Speaking of dancing, Father Macgrath said he would not attempt to define what dances were indecent. It was largely a matter for the individual. Love of notice and the passion for pleasure found expression in unbecoming and sensual dances and in excessive indulgence in the perfectly lawful pastime of dancing, but certain dances unquestionably played up to the sex impulse, and were an occasion of sin and a direct challenge to the virtue of young people. “There are to be found girls so hardened to pleasure that I believe they would jazz on their mother’s grave,” Father Macgrath added. He was speaking of what he described as the irony of girls jazzing to such airs as “Pal of My Cradle Days,” and yet giving less and less consideration to their mothers. "It iB true that a girl’s best friend is still her mother,” Father Macgrath continued. “Is it not inhuman and callous that she should heed the siren voice of a good spender-—spendthrift even—of virtue against a mother’s warning?” Those young people who ventured no more information about their movements than that they were going “out” as a rule spoke only half a truth. “Down and out” covered the case better, for a girl was on the downward grade when home was only regarded as a cheap boardinghouse and maternal interest was resented as interference.

The preacher condemned smoking and drinking because they were cheapening women. The fascinations of the practices was a fruitful source of ruin, and men who encouraged women in these practices were no friends to womanhood and no asset to society. It was the flask and not the bar that most menaced society to-day.