“THOU SHALT NOT KISS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 849, 18 December 1929, Page 17

“THOU SHALT NOT KISS”

MOSCOW’S LATEST EDICT “THIS SHAMEFUL CUSTOM” Moscow's latest edict is, “Thou shalt, not kiss!” according to travellers recently returned from Russia, who relate that the Soviet chiefs, not content with abolishing Church, Crown, marriage—and other institutions beloved of man and woman—are now conducting a furious campaign against the kiss, writes the Vienna correspondent of the “Daily Express.” The “Kiss Peril,” it appears, has taken the place of the “Yellow Peril,” party leaders declaring that hygiene must take precedence over politics and that the dispute with China can wait. An anti-kiss league has been formed with branches in every town, large and small; placards exhorting the populace to “Exorcise this shameful and fearful custom!” have everywhere been erected: “Down with kissing!” has been shouted; and waxing youth is being taught the dangers of ignorance. Even the post office has joined in the fray, and letters, in addition to the usual stamp of Lenin, now carry the Government slogan, “Think before you kiss. Every kiss costs 40,000 bacteria.” The campaign will come as a shock to those who knew Russia in the good old days before the war, when friends, relations, comrades and countrymen embraced each other whenever and wherever they met — sometimes as many as 20 times a„(Jp.y. A kiss approximated to a handshake or to a lifted hat then. “In no land,” declared Alexander Dumas pere in one of his travel hooks, “have I seen people embrace each other so much as in Russia,” “Now propaganda has invaded literature, and the latest novel from Moscow ends with this last page advice: Eighteen-year-old heroine to her lover: “A kiss? Young man, do you realise what a kiss means?”