The New York herald., 1921-04-24


fiuences. that make men and women OF
society what they are. the leading one, the
most influential one. is taste. Persuade
girl of the nice people type that she is
giving exhibition of bad taste and you'll
find that she quickly reforms her most
glaring faults.
ITO carry on with my optimistic vein
already some Of the things have all wit
messed with fear and trembling are dying
out; already there is change for the better
in dress and department. There is less
drinking (there has to be less for US ALI
among young people: girls don't smoke
quite so much because they have found
that immoderate indulgence is bad for their
throats and gives a bad note to their voices
and their manners with the callow youth Of
the opposite sex are not free
Says Five Years Will Show
Disappearance of the Evils
Il predict that in five years most of the
disagreeable sights and sounds have been
seeing and hearing in society will have
disappeared.
And | have never thought the girls like
Teddy were downright immoral. No, in
deed: / believe there Is as much absolute
chastity among women to-day as there ever
was. In the very high and in the very low
a lack of this quality has always persisted
But ii has always persisted in the great
middle class. where-don't the philosophers
and moralizers always say it?-our safety
has lain and will always lie.
These girls-fiappers, sometimes called
are not bad girls They do the outre thing
in order to be remarked for smartness. They
are true at the core. They will be cured of
the vices we rail at by a shock, disuson
some terrible unhappness. This thing is
bound to come to restore the sanity of tho
race.
4 predict also that these very girls, who
claim independence who want to see life
and go to look al ii in dangerous places, will
recover balance. Love is by no means worn
out; they will fall in love and marry. There
will, be mistakes, there will be divorces, but
the majority of these new marriages con-
tracted between boys and girls who enjoyed
a real comradeship will turn out happily.
Another thing: the girls of the present
generation who escape will know what they
have escaped. Mark what say 1t is this:
These very girls will bring up their chill
dren more carefully, more wisely, than they
themselves were brought up.
mo. indeed. men soon learn their mis-
take If they presume on a conclusion that
a girl of the day is immoral 1t is the elder
woman who is Her infiuence-that of a
gay reckless, amusing woman of the world
of Observation-Disclosures the dangerous
element in a young girls life and not the
gay young man.
THE stage has been seeking. in a small
tentative way, to be sure to enforce this
fact. Isn't IL the cynical married woman
or divorcee portrayed on the stage that
justly carries all the subtle evil OF play?
THE stage will go a step further, / believe.
and perhaps no later than next season. to
try 10 demonstrate TO the younger genera
ton that II can be dynamic force for good
as well as for evil If New York girl
realized how far her personal example pene-
trates. yes. 70 the remotest hamlet of this
broad country, she would hesitate for very
decency's sake TO make 1t debasng ex-
ample.
New York itself, the city for all it's
civic pride. does not fully appreciate what
1t do to make the country purer and
nober. Everything is drawn from New
York. There used TO be a time when the
eisured classes of small Middle Western
cities went to the nearest large city, like
Chicago St Louis. Kansas City. for its code
of manners. its kind OF amusements, its