CLOTHES ARE IMMORAL.

Shannon News, 26 January 1926, Page 1

CLOTHES ARE IMMORAL.

3,000,000 GERMAN SUN BATHERS. CULT OF THE NTJDE. (By Lady Drummond Hay in “Sunday Express.’’) “Mankind, rise up naked and faces the sun!” The war has bequeathed Germany the curious problem of her three million sun-worshippers. The movement is not by any means a new one. German Nude Culturists claim Lord Monboddo as the pioneer. As far back as 1795 he created a sensation by bathing naked in public brooks and lying in the mud, his only concession to convention, being that he were a coat of ... olive oil. He was probably alone in his convictions I*. those days. Now he would have founk three million sympathisers; as well as a prospective naked President of Germany. The nude fraternity, increasingly numerous and influential; want their* own president, and put up Louis Heuser. in the last German elections, But although he Hid not capture the Presidential chair, Herr Heuser got over 20,000 votes. His supporters 1 are by no means mere theorists, Regular statistics of their activities are to hapd, proving that the German League alone, with its many district clubs,, lias accomplished more in the last five years than many a less idealistic institution. Standing-to its credit are 180 community garden colonies, 9000 model truck gardens with playgrounds, 280 fresh-air baths and picnic. grounds, 15 holiday camps, 31 steam and sun-bath houses, 800 cluo libraries for the distribution of nude cult literature, and 500 institutes for the loan of bathing apparatus and the speeding of propaganda. Montensee, near Berlin, is a* famous site of their sylvan pastimes. Here they dance and gambol in a state °f complete undress, far from the restrictions of civilisation, £yfid as it is not a legal offence in Germany to oe naked “at a reasonable distance from the public,” there is but little risk of interference. Exclusive. All the pfemises of these Nature enthusiasts are carefully and profusely labelled, so that if the curious should be tempted to -pry through a chink in thg fence or peep over a projecting, wall no legal reparation can be expected' for outraged sensibilities. They exclusive to a degree, and th*. gatekeeper takes toll, not in pfennigs, but in outfits, allowing none to pass save those clothed solely in conviction. \ Recent investigations prove the important proportions already: assumed by. the movement in Germany. Among the best-known leagues and clubs in flourishing existence are the up-to-the-Light Circle of Friends at Chemnitz; the Band of Sun Friends in Munich; the League of Determined School Reformers, of unlimited activities; the Saint George League of Master Fidus, in Berlin; the True Alliance for Soaring Life, at Stuttgart, etc. The various, groups, .under the presidency of Fritz H. Thies,' are working together as the Working Fellowship of the German Alliance o i Crusaders for th e Light, to provide: responsible representatives for the three million disciples of the cult of the nude in politics and- society. Nude physical culture clubs abound. The Club of Rhythm Seekerh has hired the Stadium, Berlin’s big Coliseum, for night classes in naked gymnastics. Here, again no person in garments of any sort may pass the I doorkeeper.

Rival publications ar e Beauty and Joy, Beauty, founded in 1905, boasts illustrated supplement, called Ideal Nakedness— for sale at practically all newspaper stands in Germany. A collection of some; 25,000 nude photographs by amateurs and professionals can be seen in Dresden. In the event of seizure by the police they are quickly replaced. Joy anil Beauty. Joy, a more recent venture, is the organ of the “Joy Group,” disaffected “Beauty” disciples, who complain that Beauty was departing from its. original ideals by permitting the insertion of equivocal advertisements in the Beauty magazine, whose columns carry invitations and applications for companionship,, liable to misconstruction by the uninitiated. Beauty’s reply to these refuted accusations has been a new league, the Beauty Alliance, inaugurated as & secret society, whose members are morally in the care of a “soul doctor.” Occasionally a devotee, by way of propaganda, for the cause, will promenade in full undress, without decora-, tions, in public places and promptly gets arrested by the police, but fines and imprisonment are unavailing against these quaint-minded crusaders of whom a large proportion, at least, are sincerely convinced that clothes encourage immorality, since the primitives wore none, subsequently adopting garments by way of alluring ornamentation,, rather than utility. “Mankind, rise up naked and face ( the sun!” No.wonder there is a merciful eclipse sometimes.