FEWER MOUSTACHES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12776, 21 October 1919, Page 9

FEWER MOUSTACHES.

Those of us who like tho bright open British face, so distinctive because so scrupulously clean-shaven, breathe freely. All through the war the fear was with ns that we might fall from our high standard of honestly bare cheeks, lips and chin. We remembered what wo had been told of tho calamity that befell onr British looks after the Crimean War—how warriors coining homo hoarded from the campaign set the fashion which brought in the terrible mid-Vic-torian ora of whiskers. We trembled lest a like calamity should follow the great European War. Now, happily, wo know that we need not have feared. So far from being hairier of face, we are less hairy-_ Not only have beards and whiskers failed to appear, but the moustache has suffered a decline. The recent processions through London have shown that even In the Army, the last stronghold of the moustache, British manhood is clean-shaven almost to the Inst man. The decline of the moustache, at one time the sign of a military man, during a .war is a rather remarkable thing. And it hardly seemed likely when the war began. Men who were about to become soldiers got ready in advance bv growing moustaches. Other men, perhaps, who had no intention of joining up if they could help it, grew them as tho easiest way of looking martial.

But the fates were against the moustache. Ma»v things combined to kill it. First the Kaiser wore a moustache, and nobodv wanted to _do anything that the Kaiser did. Next, the overseas men were clean-shaven one and all, and we wanted to look as handsome as they. And, thirdly, those who only grudgingly obeyed tho Army order forbidding the shaving of the upper lip made it ridiculous by sporting “Charlie Chaplins”—so ridiculous that at last, some time in ’l6, the order was rescinded. It was tho first great victory ot the new Army of free Britons over the too rigid discipline of the old school, and the new free Army sprang to take advantage of it. In barracks and camps and dugouts moustaches fell m broad swaths before the all-conquenng razor There were practical reasons as well for the abolition of the Army moustache. The soldier lives largely on stow, and a hungry man, such as a soldier generally is. does not want to be bothered with a hairy hp when eating stew. And, again, moisture gathers quickly in a gas-mask, and this moisture soon _ collects about a moustache, making it exceedingly unpleasant to the wearer. Anyhow, whatever the .cause, the moustache is practically extinct, luagciing meagre only here and theijp. W© need not regret its passing. Few men look the worse for being clean-shaven, and fewer still the better for a moustache. And, after all, the cleanshaven face is a British tradition and the moustache more or less a foreign fancy- . , .. —(R H. Bretherton, m the “Daily Mail.”)