“NO GENTLEMAN.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16530, 14 September 1921, Page 6

“NO GENTLEMAN.”

BRITAIN’S NEW WOMAN. LONDON. August 30. It is a sign of the times when a sober and most conservative journal like the “ Daily Telegraph ” is daily devoting two columns to the question of the “new woman ” Prominent publicists are penning indictments stating that she has kicked over tho traces in her determination to taste fresh experiences and to discover how far her new-found independence will carry her, and that the new type is overdressed, adorably silly, and playing with her whole energies the man-attracting game.” Father Bernard Vaughan declares that the new aggressive type has ceased to bo a lady and has not yet become a gentleman. He is most anxious about her virtu©, when she openly declares that there are insufficient men as husbands, and that therefore she must have men as lovers. Ho says that the new type is much in evidence at prize fights, divorce courts and message resorts. She has even less in her than on her. A Papal encyclical declares that the two evils which predominated in the great moral subversion of to-day wore the boundless craze for possession of and the insatiable thirst for pleasure. On tho part of many the lavish caro of tho body was joined to an absolutely base license which made keener the envy of the poor. Many women, of every age and rank, were seized with a mad desire to please, and did not realise how insane were the fashions, which displeased decent perßons and offended God, as well as causing discontent. Tlioy appeared publicly in apparel from which they would once have shrunk as repugnant to Christian decency. Even to the euchaxistio table they wore trappings suggestive of shameful passions. Forms of dancing, one worse than the other, had been fetched from barbarism to be the fashion of a cultured people- Nothing was more apt to banish all modesty.