A MASKED CITY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14840, 18 February 1919, Page 3

A MASKED CITY.

SOME 1 EXTRAORDINARY SCENES. . The citizens of Sydney were ordered into masks on February 3rd. It became an offence -for any man, woman, or child to appear m public without a mask, which was defined' officially as any device so arranged that the wearer would breathe through at least four layers of gauze or butter muslin. The masks were to be sterilised daily, and were considered by the State Health authorities to afford valuable protection against the influenza.

Generally speaking, citizens responded cheerfully enough to the order of the Government. But it was "a very hot day, and as the hours passed a very material, section of the community, who found it necessary to move about the streets, were much less cheerful behind their masks than they were at the earlier stage of acquaintance with the innovation. "There is no doubt about one effect of wearing a mask on a person whose affairs involve much locomotion," said the Herald. "It imposes a rather trying teßt upon both his temper and his endurance. After 1 an hour- or so there is an overwhelming sense of partial suffocation, a feeling of intense heat, and an almost unconquerable yearning for surreptitious inhalations of atmosphere without the intervention of gauze.

"That the feeling of inconvenience will m due course be conquered may be regarded as reasonably certain. Men and women- who at the dictation of yanity have accustomed themselves to wearing high collars and tight-fitting boots on summer days are not likely to be defeated by so simple a thing as a mask. In the case of men engaged m laborious occupations, however,' the position may be different. To them — at any rate to those who work m the open — the mask becomes an insupportable torment. A gang of those brawny citizens who lift up sections of the tramway track and put down new rails were to be observed 1 working with masks on. But m each case the mask dangled gracefully from one of the wearer's sunburnt ears by a single loop of tape. "Of course, there were masks of almost every conceivable size and shape on view. There was the mask that looked like a pin-cushion — the mask that fitted closely to the face, and the mask that merely reposed on the countenance — the mask cunningly cut away to fit across the Tipper lip like pince-nez qver the bridge of the nose^ — the mask of severe design, and the mask having a certain pertness. There were masks that suggested the diminutive birdcage — masks flat, convex, round, and square. One mask which looked fairly comfortable was built to resemble a bucket. Another occasionally encountered was of the design implying plagiarisation of a garden watering-can. All this variation imparted a not unpleasng, novelty to the parade along the footpaths m the more crowded localities. It might have been observed that m the open spaces m and around the city and m the suburbs more people wore these masks m their pockets than m the position advised by medical advisers of the Minister of Health.

"Practically every woman seen m the city streets had' a mask on — and, not unnaturally, experiments m camouflage were varied and numerous. Efforts to harmonise the mask with the color scheme of dress and hat were made with apparent satisfaction at the results. There "were mauve masks, pink masks, and black masks. Masks were concealed 1 , partially and otherwise, beneath veils suspended from hats or worn tied across the face just iinder the eyes. In these cases, whatever the achievements m fashion may have been, they were certanly registered at the ooet of lost identity. "The Minister of Health regarded as excellent a suggestion that bathers should not be allowed to loiter on the beaches without their masks, and^ hoped that councils would co-operate with the Department by seeing that there was. a proper observance of the Government's regulation." There were many prosecutions for failure to wear masks. The first offenders were fined 10s, m default three days' imprisonment. The funny side of the mask scheme does not appear to have impressed Sydney, which watched the approach of the influenza very nervously.