DECLINE OF MORALS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2913, 23 July 1925, Page 2

DECLINE OF MORALS.

IMMODESTY AND GAMBLING. Auckland, July 23. Unhealthy tendencies among the youth of to-day received attention from Canon Pereival James, while preaching in Si. Mary’s Cathedral mi Sunday evening. Tie spoke especially of immodesty in dress, both on tin' street and at the beaches, of tin* salacious trend of modern fiction and pictures, and of bridge playing for money among girls.

“A disclosure T made to thr* Alothers’ Union,’’ said the canon, “has been reported in the public. Press. T am very glad it has been published. I was speaking of facts which had come to my own knowledge, and which I had investigated with parents, some of whom are listening to me now, and I have received a mass of letters which show that many share the estimate which I have formed about what is going on among the children." Is there not too much reason to fear immorality below the surface when we all see immodesty stalking abroad naked and unashamed in the light of day? Modestv used to lie thought, the crown and glory of womanhood. It is an unpopular word to-day. Look at the pictures of women in tlift magazines and illustrated papers. A large proportion of them are immodest in dress or altitude, and that is apparently the only reason for publishing them. The public wants them and gets what it wants. “Again, there are recurrent protests against immodesty in dress, but the evil seems to be increasing. Decent people who live near popular bathing beaches tell us they dislike to leave their homes or to let their children go out on Sunday in the summer. Boys and girls, young men and young women, as near to complete nudity as they can lie without rendering themselves liable to prosecution, spend the whole day, not in tin* water, but in sporting about and lying about together. Modesty is tin* priceless possession of boy and girl, of man and maid. It they are robbed of their beautiful natural reserve, a great safe-guard is gone. This is a matter for women. The united action of the head-mis-II esses of the great girls' secondary schools in Auckland could do much to remedy this."

A great part of modern fiction ought never to find its way into the hands of children, continued Canon James. The main danger was not from books actually obscene and salacious, luit from the greater number of books just “on the line," which could not lie condemned as tilterly foul, but which smudged with their coarse fingers the sacred things of love and sex and marriage. They showed human nature at its very worst.

There was some rather wild talk about motion pictures at present. Some, of course, were poisonous, and he was glad the protests against indecent picture posters seemed likely to be effective. It was said that the films themselves were not always so had as 1 he* posters would indicate. What a commentary upon popular taste! The advertisements must lie more attractively suggestive ihau the picture itself, but the main objection to the picture show was that it was mostly sheer rubbish. While pictures remained on their present plane it was for parents to guard their children against any pernicious inlluenees. There was another thing to which t'anon James said he wished to direct attention: that in Auckland it hud become the fashionable thing for girls to play bridge for money. Not long ago a mother gave a birthday present to a girl who was .just leaving school. It was a “bridge purse" in which to put her winnings and from which to pay her losses at bridge. In another ease a young girl had been forbidden by her parents to play for money, but the mother now said this prohibition must be removed "because if she does not play for money she cannot have a good time." It was said that young people could not even play a round of golf unless there was a slake upon it.