PARIS HERSELF AGAIN

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1921, Page 4

PARIS HERSELF AGAIN

(iiv Valentine Williams). PARIS. On returnin'' In Paris niter an absence el' mure than two years 1 tint! myself thinking of the title of a laiuous hook In- Geo roe Augustus Snln. written some years alter the disastrous Peace of Frankfort, '‘Paris Herself Again.” For after many vicissitudes Paris is at hist returning to the Paris one used to know. The hectic ParisDf the post-armistice, Peace Conference period has happily passed to the limho of forgotten things. The hordes of strangers, soldiers and diplomats, politicians and functionaries, who Idled the Paris slrecis uith their motor cars, who seized the host hotels, and turned them into cieditahle imitations of their bureaucratic beehives ul home, have gone. The result is a less international, a more French Paris,Jn which the lunatic exchange situation is almost the only thing to remind the superficial visitoi of the Great War.

The autumn season has o|MUied under singularly auspicious circumstances. The motor show has been the most successful on record, and il the novelties in the way of diminutive cars displayed and the interest taken in (hem In- the small French bourgeois are any criterion, 1922 is likely to see the opening of a most extraordinary boom in motoring on the roads ol Tranue. As one who, in pre-war days, knew something of French life, 1 have been profoundly astonished at the immense strides which since tbe'war have been made in the emancipation ol the jeune •ilk*. Ilchiie 1911, when 1 lived in Pans, unmarried girls of the hettei classes never walked abroad unaccompanied, while even married women would not have considered it proper to visit the Grands llindevards on loot.

lint during the past tew days I have seen voting girls who. I rout their mien and appearance, were obviously ot the hetter classes shopping in pairs in ibe centre of Paris, and one must admit that this daring innovation appears to have bad no deleterious effect whatever on public morals. The fact is that times arc bard lor the bourgeois ol France to-day. Ibe ullicial and prolosiunel chuses. with wages at their present level, simply cannot afford to keep governesses and maids to a> company tficii daughters oh I heir walks abroad.

Further, the gloving populaiily ol >pnl t ill France lias dune milch In pul nil end to the ihlbuloiis segregation of the sexes, which, as many of our p, iirli fri Is readily admit, has been icponsihlc for ~o mild imbnp; m ss in .' .■ |in>t in the mai ried hfc ol the lis'l'll'. I'.uis i- Spanish mad tust m>«. Ra|Uc| Mellrr. whose slraug.' a' I has jI-- ni..|h.W'd ■ ii" o her appearau- e ~, London, end lsal.l 1,1., Uni a fa II .ling dancer, in ■ Idling uighil;. the ( Ivmpia v.ilh iiltia-lashiuuahlc .‘iiidii* in es, which accord oddly wi.h the bo.iriiiian atmosphere ol ilns houlcvaid music-hall. Spanish shawls, Spanish lomhs, and Spanish (ringed dresses arc in all the shops.

Fiem-liwomeii are lull oi a new colour V, i.i.-b, I am told, i.- lo be "the rage” ibis season. It is described to me as the shade of the darkest petal ol the mauve oicliid. Ii figures in some ol the wonderful diessi-s in tin- new Regina Flory revue at the Cigale. Politicians of all the Allies, irrespective of nationality, receive scant respect at the hands ol tlie .Trench humorists to-day. the British with Hie rest. Rut in the swilling currents ot a most difficult situation, the strength of M. |ii ia lid's direction of a (fail's lies, il anywhere, in tlie face that bis policy of moderation, often severely criticised by the French Nationalists, represents the true feelings of provincial Trance, pint great mass, laborious. slucwd. little seen and seldom vocal, but nevertheless ibe diiect iug clergy of all the groat movements of French polity.