The Washington times., 1920-07-20
riot OF NUDITY"
SCORED BY EDITOR
shameless Sex" Good Name,
Concludes Douglas, Of Lon
don Sunday Express.
Written for InteryA tionai News
Service
By JAMES DOUGLAS.
EdlInr M The SuuduX ElurosE. LoudoJ


By JAMES DOUGLAS.
Editor OF the sunday Express, London.
LONDON, July 2O.-What Is the
meaning OF the riot OF nudity into
which the world OF womanhpod has
plunged 80 frantically? Here touch
very dangerous subject-woman.
Nearly everybody who touches her
burns his fingers. After thousands
OF years man knows very little about
this battling and elusive creature. and
what he thinks he knows is invari-
ably wrong.
The war has profoundly disturbed
the feminine mind. Many millions OF
young males have been slaughtered.
mutilated. or deranged, There is a
world shortage OF males. Tho strange
herd-soul of woman, moving in the
mass, has taken fright at the SEN
tence of celibacy which has been
passed upon her. There are not
enough men TO go round. Before the
war the rivalry OF women was acute.
Today IL is frenzied. Instinctively
the herd-soul Of woman is doubling
its allurements, trebling it's wiles,
quadrupling it's bats.
1t has cast modesty to the winds.
1t has abandoned all it's reserves and
war. and the herd-soul of woman is
resorting TO the most audacious de-
I vices in order TO captivate and cap
ture the surviving males.
The vogue of the Jazz dance is one
symptom of this frenzy. The violent
outbursts of vehement colors In fem
mime raiment is another. The hys-
terical eccentricity OF feminine at
, tire is another. But the most alarm
iS bn a hTaZpn
display of feminine charms. / have
always suspected that man Is the shy
sex and that woman is the shameless
sex, but now l know it. In pure-or
impure effrontery women today are
the equals, If not the superiors, or
the women of any epoch.
The growth of feminine shameless
ness has been so gradual that we
have become Injured to 1t. We can
hardly remember the days before the
war when decency was still prac-
ticed in the public theater and the
public restaurant by respectable
women. 1t is not easy to recall the
era of the veiled calf.
, But the climax in effrontery Is the
vogue of the bare back. The other
night at a theater the bare backs in
the stalls suggested that the stage
had ceased to compete with society.
A man said to me that he felt in
clined to go to the theater in future
armed with a rubber stamp. Before
him sat a lady with nothing on her
back, which was cnameled with
some pink liquid. II should like" he
said. "to brand her in red with the
words wet paint"
1t is not pleasing to sec matron
of forty or fifty summers with dyed
hair. rouged lips, painted cheeks.
blackened eyelids and eyelashes,
brandishing her adipose back at dis
gusted crowd.
Worse still is the abominable i'm
modesty of the young girl who apes
the manners, if not the morals, of
the courtesan. The age of childhood
seems to have passed. Girls are
grown up at twelve, blase at thirteen,
heartless at fourteen, birds of prey at
fifteen, cynics at sixteen, and sour at
seventeen.
1t is the fault of the mothers. They
no longer guide and restrain the
pleasure-loving girl. They allow her
to rub off the bloom of youth in
dubious resorts with doubtful COM
panions.
The remedy Is the last of public
ipnion. 1t ought to be applied with
out delay.