NIGHT CLUBS IN WAR TIME

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2600, 23 October 1915, Page 15

NIGHT CLUBS IN WAR TIME

"The French people think the English very frivolous." Tlis was quite a topsy-turvey statoment to hear, hut coming as it did from Miss Compton-Legge, a Sydney resident, who was ill Paris last July, and had many opportunities of judging and observing the life of the French capital, as slio possesses French relations, the opinion was one to be taken seriously states a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald"). It was in connection with the night clubs of London, which, the Bishop of London has been denouncing, that Miss Legge found the Parisians were expressing themselves more or less strongly. "Paris was in deep distress," she went on. 'It was in the dark first days of the great Russian rotreat. Shops were shutting up, placcs of amusement were closed: all the women, the gay, laughing, pleasure-loving Parisian women, went about in grey or black clothes, with a downcast mien. All realised that the national crisis was acute. The women, as well as the men, were taking life with a grim determination; the\Set look 011 the faces of all meant 'do or die.' With this spirit animating the capital of France, was it strange that all gossip about the gay doings at the London night clubs was heard with scornful surprise ? Tho characters of the two countries have changed. For 'our lively neighbour the Gaul' was proverbial for his frivolity, hut now tho stolid, steady John Bull is reproached for that defect of not taking things seriously."

; "To my defence that all this gaiety is kept up for the benefit of tho soldiers on leavo from tho front, who declare themselves 'sick of tho war,' and wish to get away from the dreadful business for a while at least, and like to.se© the women wearing pretty clothes and showing, a gay demeanour, my French friends replied, 'Yes, that's just it. Your English men are frivolous.' " Visitors from Australia to London have been struck with the strange uncanny dissipation that prevails in some quarters at this time of crisis. A Sydney woman recently received a letter from her niece, wife of well-known young Sydney man, who is "doing his bit" for his country. The missive referred to the contrast between London and Paris, which latter city the writer had visited first. "Paris is absolutely doad," she wrote, "but London is very gay. The night clubs are a great fashion, and: everybody goes." The Bishop of London's strictures caused no surprise to those who knew the state of affairs.