PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 14 January 1932, Page 2

PUBLIC OPINION

FASHION TYRANNY. “It is disquieting to note the admonitions of a new Petronius Arbiter that Fashion ha s instituted an absolutely new regime in women's dress, and that the old arrangement whereby a daygow<s was worn in the daytime, and. presumably, a night-gown at night, is now an anachronistic banality. Such .simple distinctions we are assured, are no longer possible. It is solely the use for which it ha s been designed that determines the style and even the name of a robe. . . . For instance. . . a dress for a cocktail party has nothing in coiWmon with an afternoon frock, in the old-fashioned sense of the latter term. Only a civilisation so ultra-civilised as ours, -and so consecrated to the most refined of the virtues of civilisation, can conceive the heroic spectacle of a fashionable lady, full of cocktails, and clad in a, cocktail parity dress of the absolutely dernier cri, perishing ol starvation in an abode of plenty because she had forgotten to bring along her dinner gown.”—The "San Francisco Aigonaut.” OX THE IMPERIAL FRONT. “Every part of the Empire is sufferng under the present depression, and, though there are particular causes at work in each particular part, there are more general causes which affect us all

.dike. The broader the front < over which those causes can be attacked on a common plan the greater the chances of success. Some of these causes indeed are universal, and rail tor the cooperation of all nations to combat them ; but 'the possibility ot world-wide co-operation wou.'d be immensely strengthened if all the Governments of the British Empire were work.ng to gether in unison, instead oi' separately as at present and too often at crosspurposes. It is general causes oi this kind that have been responsible for the dislocation of the machinery of international exchange, resulting in the partial or complete abandonment- ot the gold standard by most ol the couutius of the world ; and i-t has made matters worse that, in dealing with the currency problem, each of the Governments of the Empire has followed a policy of its own without any attempt at common or even co-ordinated action. - “The Times” (London).

LEAVENS OF CULTURE. “It has been a common saving since I’ope first said it that a littie learning is a dangerous thing," writes ALr Hubert Read, one of the ablest of modern literary critics in England. “But far more dangerous is the learning which, though not little, is limited. .It" is idle to think that any good can come of a specialisation that is pot linked -to* some wider ethos, itself the product of a versatile- intelligence, or that is not subordinate to general wisdom.” The healthy activities of our literary societies, ciubs. and reading circles are practical evidence ot the fact that, although we are a practical and progressive people holding our own in a civilisation which i,s based largely on materialism, we are cultivating an aesthetic sense which enables us to welcome what is best in English literature ana which will perhaps in tile futuie pave the way to the production of further distinctive Australian coirtri button,s to the literature of the world.--"Age” (Melbourne).