The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1913. GIRLS AND BOYS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 199, 11 January 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1913. GIRLS AND BOYS.

"The rosebud garden of girls" was somewhat ruthlessly ravaged by Mr. Adamson at the (Science Congress in Melbourne on Thursday, and whilst we do nut think that his remarks are intended to have a general application to New Zealand, we must admit that there is i good deal of truth in some of the statements he made. Mr. Adamsou accuses the Australian girl of being the first to make advances in the ordinary process of Natural selection and attributes to what he calls ,; the encouraging glance" the gradual growth of a lack of chiva'.ry among the othir .sex. Of course, "the encouraging glance" may mean .a whole lot of tilings, or it may mean nothing. It may be unite a harmless perpetuation of the instinct of Mother Eve when Adam complained that ''the woman tempted me. and I did eat." or it may be something much less desirable, and far akin from the simple preening of the ken birds' feathers, which comes naturally in the spring time. We live, of course, in an age and in a country where youth is allowed far more liberty than was accorded to onr grandfathers and grandmothers. This is a result of our newer environment and the fact of our lack of a heritage of tradition is creating a new temperament. A generation is arising that knows not the Joseph i

of restriction, and it rca'.ly does threaten to become a perverse and wayward one. It is easy to boast of the value of liberty and to prate of the freer life of the colonies, but there is a stage at which liberty becomes license and freedom the impudence of self-assertion. Mr. Adamson finds the Australian boy lacking in chivalrous respect to girls of his own age, and regrets the breaking down of the old formalities in the intercourse of the sexes. Nobody can dispute the correctness of this statement, but what is more objectionable still is that this lack ot respect docs not stop with his contemporaries; it extends to his parents and elders. Of course, the one '$ a natural corollary to the other, and we ought to be more concerned with causes than effects. Mr. Adamson states that "without fear of effective contradiction, in adolescence it was almost always the girl who commenced casual acquaintanceships made in public places, if not actually accosting the boy, then by what might be mildly termed the look of encouragement. Nothing was more socially amazing than the way parents in respectable positions allowed their daughters to roam the streets unchecked, adding scalps to their belts in unwholesome rivalry, seeing who could pick up the greatest number of chance acquaintances. Then followed correspondence, almost invariably started by the girl." This is probably something of an exaggeration. It is, at least, as far as our own country is concerned, but even in so far as it does exist it is not confined solely to the period of adolescent femininity. But we must all agree with Mr, Adamson's plea for a stronger measure of parental control. Nobody wishes to cramp or confine either the mental or the physical faculties of our boys and girls, but there is a serious danger of our going to the other extreme, and allowing the children a measure of liberty that is harmful to the development of their characters and must ultimately be harmful to the character of the nation. We have not a great deal of dread of "the look of encouragement," but we have a very pronounced fear of the shabby little ways and the pitfalls it may lead to. We do not expect Mrs. Grundy to live in Bohemia with any degree of comfort, but, on the other hand, we do not «are to have Bohemia trespassing on the domains of that estimable lady who figuratively guards our morals and acts as a social brake. Seriously, there is a danger even in our own country of too great laxity in the treatment of our young, and especially of our girls. There is nothing more charming or more delightful than a home where the parents and the children live in frank friendliness, but even the modern liberty of home should not be. extended to the streets and the playgrounds. We are not so bad in this respect as our Australian friends are, apparently, but still we might be a great deal better.