The Irish standard., 1913-08-23

Indecent Modes.
''NeveD lp history were the modes
so ahhdtly indecent as they are
tod0 - may make the closest
80 q oDas through the prints
- 0kg and sc11Dtures of 5000
0D and find nothing to equal the
shameless styles worn unabashed in
the crowded streets and summer re-
sorts by hundreds of thousands of ap.
parently respectable girls"
Many more religious papers are out
spoken in condemnation of ''the mode
Of today" as. for instance, the Kan
sas City Catholic Register, which
says: There is no artistic excuse
for some of the costumes ~ be seen
in public places" and classifies cer-
tain garments as designed to compel
instant attention to their indecency;"'
while of the secular press, the New
York Times, commenting on a dis
patch from its Paris correspondent
that women's dress models this sum-
mer are "the most audacious since the
Directoire." is at loss for an ex-
planatisn:
"The Directoire audacity is under
standable. France had been having a
debauch in the name of freedom, re-
ligion had been nearly obliterated,
morals were at low ebb, and the
social condition was exactly expressed
in the dress Of the women. But that
social condition surely does not exist
now. Therefore fashions, to
express the new sense of the alarm
ing development of evil and the need
Of suppressing i should become more
formal and modest. -1i6t take on the u
aspect Of the bacchanalia. There IL
no accounting for the extravaganza
of the prevailing Partisan mode"
Reasonable for Crime.
OF poigna1 interest, and from diff
ferent angle, are the observations Of
DIR. Edwin H. Lewis in American
Medicine, who tells US that "immodest
dress Is responsible for many young
girls ruin and down1all," and pro-
claims it a fact that "every medical
man of large practice and experience
hsws only too well the fires kindled
by the present dress of young fe-
males" That fashion never stands
still is the sonsolinG reflection Of the
San Francisco Chronicle, which pro-
diets that Sin a short while there will
be a return to costumes that leave
little to the Imagination" while on the
subject Of the dance, The Chronicle
reminds US that in Byron's day the
waltz was held to be the end of all
decency." and wonders whether the
turkey trot may yet become as re-
spectacle and tame" Any suggestion
of immortality in these dances, we are
told by The Christian Work and Evan.
gelist (Undenom.) is quickly resented
by protesting Christians who indulge
in such dancing, but the facts are
against them, and this journal con-
tinues:
what means all Of the stir today
over the cabaret shows and afternoon
dances, with their 'tangos' and turkey
trots' and grizzly BEARS and all the
rest, too shameful to print? Police,
church and school authorities every
where are stirred to c0ference and
to action oWr the dem0Q Qlization that
is plainly evident throSA the incom-
ing Of these indecent 0nces which
are sweeping over t. country like
an epidemic. Things must be bad,
indeed, when public officials, never
accused OF being overscrupulous, are
aroused and issue DEGREES against
these forms Of the dance" 4a.
Reaction at Hand.
Not all who engage in these dances
are impure. the Baptist Examiner
New York; is diligent to show, al
though it AYERS that "the whole ten
dency of these outrageous perform.
ances is toward the indecent, the inn
moral, the putrid" Equally critical
in her views, although purely analytic
in her method, is Cora Harris. who.
writing in the Philadelphia Saturday
Evening Post says that the turkey
trot Is "a form Of amusement designed
for primitive people by primitive, peo--
pie before they discovered the danger
of being too natural" and reminds ~
that at first such dancing was "an ex-.
preston Of religion" At present, hoW-
ever, it is neither religious nor pious,