THE AGE OF MANNERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 18

THE AGE OF MANNERS

When 1 asked a hostess of this new London season whether she had noticed any recent social change she replied, "Yes. Young men are answering invitations again. They also write to thank you after the party," stated a London writer recently. It is a humiliating reflection on our times that such a statement should need to be made or seem at all striking. The truth is that while other ages have been more affected, others as hectic, the present epoch has outshone them all as the age of bad manners. Good manners go far deeper than mere punctiliousness: they are the windows of the soul. They imply kindness, fellow-feeling, human sympathy. Moreover, if good manners are now making a reappearance on the social stage, their influence will be felt in private life. There is as much room for politeness in the home as in somebody else's homo, toward peopl© you know as toward comparative strarfeers. The reason why tho Edwardians made a success of marriage was that they were too well-mannered, showed too much consideration for each other and those whose example they were, to admit failure. Is it too much to hope that society's reversion to decent standards of behaviour is more than a passing fashion, that it implies a renewed sense of its responsibilities, that it even portends an awakening of finer sensibilities after a dead and shallow period ? The intellect, at least, should derive greater stimulus from the formal entertainments of the present than from tho promiscuous orgies of the past.