STREETS OF LONDON TOWN.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1918, Page 6

STREETS OF LONDON TOWN.

NFAV ZEALAND OFFICIAL'S COMPLAINT CONFIRMED. (From the National News, Jan. C.) The honorary Commissioner of the New Zealand Y.M.C.A., Mr. W. G. Jamieson, on his return home after two years in Egypt, England, and France, has been deal in? in plain, outspoken fashion about some of the things which are not as often spoken of or written about as they might be. One of the statements he makes is that "when the Overseas.lads arrived in London they arrived in hell." While many will not entirely agree with thii lurid and sweeping description, it is, nevertheless, matter for.profound regret that the most dangerous social evils abound in London at the present time; that the Oversea soldier, flush with money, and possessed of a supreme confidence in his capacity to navigate successfully the shoals and shallows of the underworld of our great Metropolis, is beset with snares and temptations on all sides, and that, unquestionably, very deplorable results ensue in far too many cases. r,[r. .Tamieson, in his scathing and rather highly colored indictment, specially siwrles out the Strand. "(!o along the Strand,'' he says, "night after night, and you will see sights that would turn you sick." But it is not the Strand alone wliieh offends the eye and wounds the sensibilities of those who would wish a better-ordered social life. Leicester-square nas its own unenviable notoriety, yliilc Piccadilly Circus and its environments, with their so-cal-led "beauty-shops" and "massage'' establishments—some even run by limited "liability companies—cater for their own particular class. Though the tiling may not be altogether as "damnable" as Mr. Jamoison describes it, there can be no doubt it is very disgraceful. It is not creditable to our metropolitan morality or to our methods of social organisation m wartime. Neither can one. think that the professional type of woman, who has recourse, to this particular social sin for her livelihood, is the worst offender. The influx of Oversea manhood and soldiers on short leave has brought to the front a new type of femininity—the young flapper—who, in a state of giddy independence, run all sorts of risks, are responsible for mucli of the mischief of which just complaint can be made, and constantly hover on the brink of the fatal precipice which leads to inevitable destruction. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police area rightly declares that the law, as it stands, gives him and his subordinates very little power of handling this evil. Both the English and Colonial spirit of independence would be up in arms against any proposal to interfere with their liberty of action, as they no doubt would term it. But most good citizens will think that it would be * gain for the moral and material welfare of the nation if a system could be devised for the compulsory recruitment for some form of useful war service of those ten 3 of thousands of women who are a snare and a danger to our home and Imperial manhood, and who menace the health, not alone of this, but of mary succeeding generations.