WAR MORALITY

Southland Times, Issue 18623, 22 August 1919, Page 2

WAR MORALITY

A JUDGE’S VIEW CRITICISED. Other times other morals. . . Mr Justice Darling recently said : “In nothing has the war done more barm than in the relaxation on the part of women. This has now reached a point that can be seen in a walk along the street. Women differ by the width of Heaven from what their mothers were.” Mr Justice Darling's views have been widely discussed. "We must never again expect to have Victorian respectability,” said Dr Mary Schaflieb. “The daughter lives to-day in a very different world from that in which her mother existed. She is surrounded by far more temptations. The telephone, the motor car, the general speeding up of life, all tend in the one direction morally. “I do not see any immediate prospect of the present, let us call it, lightness passing off. Fundamentally it is the logical outcome of women becoming independent economically and, in a lesser degree, politically. A girl is meeting men more on an equality, and that is telling both ways. But I would not say that she compares badly with her mother, “It is no use ever expecting a revival of parental control among the masses. : The girl will henceforth control herself. I would say further that Mr Justice Darling has probably uttered his dictum as the result of a walk down the Strand. But let us cease to compare ourselves with the Vic. torians. We are worse —and better.” “Why,” asked Lady Muir-Mackenaie, “doesn't Mr Justice Darling confine his remarks to men? lam tired of men laying down the law for women. The open, unrestrained pleasure quest of to-day is far less harmful morally than the hidden, secret quest of yesterday of the Victorians. You cannot judge life by what you see. on the surface. In any case, I always look on the view of a judge as warped." “I think,” said Mme. Clara Butt, “we are getting away from that awful prudery—false, half the time—by getting used to seeing beauty for beauty’s sake—not for any other motive.” “What Mr Justice Darling says is only too true,” was the view expressed at a famous women’s asociation. “The war has entirely changed the former reserved attitude of young women towards the opposite sex. Much of the present laxity is unquestionably due to young girls taking drink. Everyone is far too over-excited now-a-daya for any decent moral tone to win through. If things go on as they are at present—well, the width of another place than Heaven will separate the women of to-day, bad as they are as a whole, from the daughters of to-morrow.”