A PETROL PUMP IS PRETTIER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 281, 27 November 1936, Page 3

A PETROL PUMP IS PRETTIER

BEVERLEY NICHOLS ON SHORTS Beverley Nichols, who has been on a visit to Germany has returned to England a great admirer of Hitler, Nazism and of the German girl. He jr says: ‘Tn Germany no woman makes up, whether she is a barmaid or a debutante or a housewife. . . ‘lf my sister painted her lips,' said a dashing young cavalry officer to me. I should do. . . well, he went through the imaginary motions of turning the young woman over and giving her a series of sharp slaps. . . . Compared with English girls who still cling to shorts (or perhaps it would be better to say that the shorts cling to them), they look like goddesses. The German girl realises that she is a girl and not a boy. which is a brilliantly original thing to do in this year of grace. She realises that a girl in shorts is a very unpleasant and subtly indecent object . . . above all, an exceptionally ugly object, with the very rarest exceptions. If only English girls would understand this! “If they only knew how very much prettier is a petrol pump is than the figure of a girl in shorts! Presumably, when they put on their shorts they pose in front of the glass in the most becoming positions and are delighted with their reflection. They do not realise that they will shortly be adopting very different positions. ... I have come back with the conviction that the modern German girl is not only the loveliest being in the world. A, but also the most sensible. It is not till he goes to Germany that a man remembers something that he had Jong been in danger of forgetting. . . namely, that the things that he admires in women are feminine things and not masculine ones. “I don’t mind women making-up, provided they know how to do it, which is not often. 1 like lips which are delicately accentuated (but not lips that look as though their owner had just been eating raspberry jam), and I like a nose which is properly powdered* but not a nose that looks as if it had been covered in flour) ... To the modern German girl I ‘ take off my hat. Any honest man who has met her would do the same. And if English girls don't look out there will be a great many AngloGerman marriages in the near future unless I am very much mistaken."