ALL-BRITISH WEEK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 80, 24 May 1911, Page 5

ALL-BRITISH WEEK.

SPURIOUS PATRIOTISM IX SHOPS. “A stroll through the all-British simps in London last week hrougat some comfort bo tnc least patriotic women, even to the woman who, like myself, is so unpatriotic as to think that true patriotism consists in aboltailing artificial barriers, whether ol race, or class, 01 sex, and that it is bettor to take the best when we find it, and to be thankful for finding it anywhere, than to limit any kind ol activity, human or commercial, to one country or to one set of persons,’ writes Miss Evelyn Sharpe, in the “Manchester Guardian.” A CERTAIN KIND OF PATRIOTISM. “In appearance the shops were making a fine show last week of a certain kind of patriotism. Outside one draper’s shop von might see a huge plaster figure of John Brill carrying a whip in his hand. In several of the shop windows live women—you do not have to use a plaster figure when you want to make a show of a woman—might lie seen making Irish linen garments with an English sewing machine. “Real consolation to the all-Brit-ish woman lurks even in the discovery that nearly everything she used to bo beguiled into buying on the assumption that it was French was really British all the time. One gathers that this was so from the little apparent change to be seen in the shop windows last week, though they were labelled all-British and draped in Union Jacks. One seemed to see exactly the same masses as before of overbrimmed hats, or ribbons and laces and gloves, of coats and cos-, tunics and blouses. r l he French creation of yesterday, is the all-British production of to-day. “Here and there, on a piece ol Maltese lace, perhaps, or on what is technically known as a ‘switch’- of hair, truth would out, and the noncommittal label read ‘Mainly British.’ This is only a small matter, no doubt, but, it must be discouraging to the all-British lady to feel that, although she may be clad all over in Irish linen and Harris tweed, the top of her head is only Anglo-German. She can, however, crown her hair with brilliantly coloured shot and shaded ostrich feathers ‘All-British—straight from the farm’—and she need never shake her faith by visiting that Imperial farm in South Africa whore every ostrich is doing its duty by growing feathers in all tho known aniline dyes. “But if she is a woman of sense she will continue to buy what she wants, whatever its label, because that is the only way in which she can indicate to the patriotic shopman the way to keep the trade in his own country. The Whole silly bubble of artificial boundaries seems to mo to be. pricked by one of this week’s advertisements —‘British-made blouses that reflect the thought of the world’s best designers.’ You can keep out foreign goods, perhaps, but you cannot keep out the foreign brain that evolved them. And no patriot of imagination would wisli to keep out either.

A NARROW SUPPOSITION

“Tho truth is, ive have lived under Free Trade too long to believe that a tiling is inferior because it is foreign or superior because it is British. The whole spirit of to-day is against such a narrow supposition. If a British article has t*o bo wrapped in a Union Jack Lefore anyone wants to buy it, it had better bo wrapped in its tarpaulin jacket at once and dropped into tho German Ocean. If British fashions arc inferior to French fashions, the only patriotic course to pursue is to create facilities for the better training of British dressmakers. Nobody is a more fervent patriot for being content with an inferior article liocau.sc it happens to be British. “It was a relief one day last week to come across one small shop in a busy thoroughfare, a shop in which the only reference to the all-British week lay in the simple announcement, ‘Our goods are always British.’ There was no crowd in that shop. All the patriots were over the way, where tho flags of eyery nation under the cun had beguiled them into tho largest American firm in the town.”