WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.

Observer, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10, 10 November 1917, Page 18

WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.

"HOW THE PRUDE ON THE PROWL HAS RUINED LONDON:'

By Max Pbmberton.

WHAT ia<re we going to do for Master Thomas Atkins when lie is on leave p ' Are we-going to put him into a nursing home and give him a. copy of Pearson on the creed; or are we going to realise our responsiblities and to reward him, as he should he rewarded, for all that he has done for us? That is not a little, be it rememberod. For many months together he has been lying out there in the dtist and mud of Flanders; he has seen death all about him, arid felt tihe stricken earth tremble beneath his feet when the big, guns made?the music. The providence of God.alone has sent him back whole to us. He would have dreamed of the days of home-ooming, if the gloom of London were not the common gossip of the trenches. But he has heard that it. is a "rotten place"—nay, "a blighted hole*" in jiis own chosen words-. And next time, as he said to me. but yesterday, he will spend his leave in Paris. * • • Imagine that. So cold a welcome after all that he who has saved our skins does not want to come home to us ot all. . For what is he to do in this capital of all the cities? It is true that t he may go to a revue and see a number of scraggy chonis girls (or otherwise), watch a red-nosed comedian doing the things he did ten years ago, and hear the trombones which threaten to blow him into the street. But, oddly enough, he is more than fed up with all this. The revue has ceased to make an appeal to him.' If he be without girl friends, as often is the case, he cannot sit through the play alone. And, in any. case, the theatre has its limitations; it cannot satisfy; it is but an interlude and it insists that you shall sit still. Now, Thomas at home does not particularly Want to sit still. He wants to move about. Just as Ben Ghxn in "Treasure Island" desired above all things a piece of strong cheese, so do our boys on leave crave for something which has movement about it. In effect this comes to the dance; but we have madieit practically impossible that they should dance; we have called it an enormity and haye shut the doors of all the rooms in which such crimes were perpetrated. And this because there did happen to be dances which were i-otten and gatherings which were undesirable. A more absurd volte face has never afflicted any community. We have waged a war. against the primitive instincts of the British boy. I venture to say that we have lost the game. • . • • Hear the soldier for himself: "I got to London after ten o'clock," said lie, "and was told ' I could not have any supper. Next day I went to the Savoy and had a craving for a sole done in a ; . particular way. I couldn't order it because I was told it costs too much. Yet an old man at the next table, fat as a drum and all diamond rings, ate my sole and steak 'minute' after that, and omeletts and things, and drank Lord , knows how much champagne , . "At night we used to dine at; the Savoy, and ofterwards have a jolly little dance in the rooms off Palm Court. You can't do that now—it's become wicked." But I'll tell • you what you can do. You can' set off about midnight and go to: a house in a by-street not three hundred yards from the Criterion Theatre— and if you've got th« entree you cam open the door on the first floor, find yourself among a dozen couples who haven't troubled the tailor or the costumier; you can dance and dirink with them till the cows come home, and see an orgy which would have made Cleopatra' blush. And that's the only kind of amusement you seem able to provide for us." It does indeed. And we are begin-

nhig to provide it freely. Ask any man about town who knows what is going on in pertain flats and studios—chiefly studios—in Chelsea any night "of the week you care to name, he will stagger you.. For the vampires have come out and ,our: com-, m'on sense has gone in. "Wicked to dance," says the old gentleman with one foot in a bandage and the other in the grave. I have been told gravely that no soldier, on leave should be allowed to sit up until twelve. o]clock, as it α-obs him of hie "condition." Monstrous. The poor lad has been twelve months in France, perhaps, and many night through has he watched in peril for us. And we are to treat him on his homecoming as a (cowled monk—jput a girdle about him and a tract in his hand. Do you wonder that we are driving him to the devil? Are you surprised that the Chelsea studios flourish ? But -Tommy is not always to be dancing. It' is sumaner and the sun is. shining. His thoughts, regardless of the season, lghtly turn to love, and he goes into Hyde Park, perchance, and takes a decent girl with him. It is a perilous journey, but he has nowhere, else, to igo. and aiiy time is kissing time, or 'should be." • • • Now, if this good fellow is bent on an evil errand —as many are— his path is easy. He can easily outwit the prying woman patrol—who, unwittingly, has done much mischief, I fear—and there are easy ways of dodging the vigilance of the harrased police. But if he is an honest fellow, his adventure is likely to cost him dear. Nothing has astonished me >so much lately as certain investigations I have been able to make into the Avorking of the Parks Act and. the prosecutions which follow at Marlborough Street. For I find that to kiss" a girl in Hyde Park is an offence against the law for which a soldier is often fined the whole of the money he has in his pocket. The lightest demonstration of a man's affection can be thus twisted into a criminal offence by these prying women, who so, rarely catch the real, offenders, but so often indict the innocent. Even the counsel concerned are often disgusted. "It made my blood boil," said one of them to me recently when speaking of a ca.se. We should have shared his indignation had we been in court that day. Here was. a young fellow charged with kissing a girl and lying on the grass with her. They were engaged, and the mother gave the daughter an excellent character. "A good and true girl," she said. The woman patrol's evidence was ridiculous and pour rire. The girl's- great offence appeared to be that she had short skirts. To how many an honest woman in London could not that charge apply to-day. Yet I understand that the mlan Was fined five pounds and his fiancee three. Montirous, indeed, and again throwing us back upon the Chelsea studio. We must be blind if we do not appreciate the true significance of these 'things. For Heaven's sake let us have gardens where a man can sit in the sunshine with his girl and hold her hand and kiss her if he be so moved. This Parks Act is a curse, and the state of Hyde Park a public scandal; but we seem to be lost to all sense of proportion, and the man of sixty tugs at his beaird and l tells the boy of twenty-one what he ought to dp. . Meanwhile there is. none to care for thf soldier on l©ar«. Eve» if he hayc parfehte and a home it is difficult to amuse liim. War br«eds a" craving for light and music and laughter. It would take a man into the fresh air and the sunshine and' bid him look upon the flowers. Not of this Erogland of the shuttered rooms and the darkened halls, and , the police a tip-toe, have the good fellows in France dreamed', but of a merrie land whose safety they have

won, whose glory they have made enduring. Let us not continue to shatter their romance. Let the fiddles be tuned, when they oome home and the tables s#.

And for God's sake do not let us sole which the fat man is eating.