1948-11-13 — Page 9

BUT I TELL YOU I DIDN'T ORDER A MASSAGE"

BOY-MAD

*

WORK

World Copyright ila érrangemant with Rizning Mantned.

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1948.

00

SHE SMOKES TOO MUCH ... AND

IS A 'DISTASTEFUL INTERLUDE'

Is there a cure for

the good-time girl?

THE

T

anthropological

ap.

icc

C.V.R. THOMPSON REPORTS THE AMERICAN SCENE

To ban or

not to ban

NEW YORK.

UE ban on "Oliver Twist," inspired by New York's Zionists, has suddenly become a hot tople in the correspondence columns of the U.S. newspapers' and news magazinės.

Renders are writing In to protest against what they call the censorship of the classics.

Their line in that if the Jows resent Fagin, why should not the English resent Bill Sikes, that if "Oliver Twist is anti-Semitle, then Shakespeare's "Henry V." is anti-French, and the play "Little Black. Sambo" is anti-Negro.

A typical letter: "I bitterly resent that pressure groups should have successfully committed a breach of democratic process in depriving me and many millions of others of our right to see the film."

ADVERTISEMENTS for British-made shoes appearing

in New York's newspapers today call them "hand- some as a Coldstream colonel, agile no a Bengal Lancer, and ageless as his Majesty's throne.

YOU CAN GO TO GAOL America now if you

refuse to tell the courts whether or not your friend is a Communist. The California courts serit ten wit- nosses, including two mothers, to gaol for refusing to answer questions about some Government employees suspected of Red sympathies. They will stay there until they decide to talk.

SERICA (20673) Private livos of 103 ["ordinary girls" in city, town and village came under the eye of the investigator in a two-year survey of Britain's toon-agers. The facts now made public about the British Working Girl, 1948, form a disturbing and challenging document. It is analysed hare by

Margaret Lane

MANTENARIUATE

Jephcott's

FOR THE BENEFIT of American

reporters Sir Osbert Sitwell described Britain's Austerity life thus: "By and large, I find it no more uncomfortable than life in British public school. Once you're through that, life no matter what it brings,

one long holiday."

IN BOSTON the other day police raided a house next door to 1 spot revered in American history- the stable from which Paul Revere borrowed a horse for his legendary midnight ride to warn that the British were coming to fight the American rebels. Police arrested six bookies in possession of more than 100

Jess slips recording bels on glamorous horses.

do Evening classes

not tempt The answer is, I suppose, that by them, youth organisations and tradition and by circumstances they proach to our fellow crea- us leave them cold because they have no alternative. Marriage is tures produces fascinating do not provide the one essential the end of freedom and leisure and

Relations GOVERNMENT public and disconcerting results. Mr opportunity for meeting, not boys adventure, but not to marry early

Omeers will is to fail in Ilfe.

try to persuade Geoffrey Gorer has recently of their own age, but new and older

That being so, it is logical for rule out the physical relationship Americans to splurge on nut brends, turned a trained, dispassionate men

explore the

of well-being nut ples, widest as a lasting source

nut biscuits and

nuity rink, the girls to The dance hall, the eye on the Americans, and now

to them and happiness. So they flutter, irres- sweets this winter. Reason: the the public-house and the street. choice of men available Miss Pearl Jephcott, whose ex- provide these encounters, and it is

In the time at their disposal, and ponsible as maths, and, while the biggest nut harvest in U.S. history.

they will meet inoth-life lusts, are as ignorant and is futile for well-meaning organisations the greatest number of prospective as feckless.

the places where perience with her subject

MANY AMERICANS have both sympathetic and profound, to compete with them.

evening in- The valuable, the truly !mpor- The favourite recreation is, husbands are not the

Miss has analysed and dissected the

become accustomed to cating hall and research is that it is almost impos-margarine ever since butter began working-class girl of the pre-course, the cinema, and it is here that stitute and the youth club, but the tant thing about

the girls form their standards and public-house, the dance

the street.

sible to read her book. without costing 5s, a Ib. that there is now sent time.

receive their adult education. Most

How can they be interested in arriving at her attitude of under- a glut of butter. Today dairies of them have gone regularly, several any job when their greatest ambi- standing. The condemning attitude, began Д nation-wide advertising They are important, these girls. times

п week, since they were

tion is to leave it as carly as pos- the "modern-girl-God-help-us" posi- campaign with such slogans as: They are now between 10 and 20, children, and five nights a week at

sible? How, in any case, be in- tion, emerges as a kind of hostility, "Butter's your best buy in years," and will soon be the mothers of the pictures is not uncommon.

terested in the boring routine, a failing in human Imagination. "It's better with buiter," "Bulter new generation. Soon, too, they

A few of the girls read, some unskilled work which is almost all Refusing to condemn. however, is America's symbol of good living." will have (and possibly even use) a voraciously. Their

"books" are that is open to these girls?

is not the same as accepting a Butter price.now; 35. 34. without exception, love romances The boring routine work has to situation as either good or inevit- Tho entire cinema industry and from the twopenny shop-libraries, be done, perhaps it is no bad thing able. Is it possible to help these

und fim magazines, to have it performed a great deal of commercial adverti- and beauty

by cheap, girls to grow up, to make them less sing 19 aimed at their claborately They are addleted to the radio, and unskilled, transient female labour: ignorant and dull, to put them into collfured heads. They are the girls like, to have it on, usually very but to expect the girls to be the way of batter lives?

lang, at home or at interested in it is hypocrisy. who fil our factories, serve behind loudly, all day

half our counters, occupy

the work, though they listen consciously cinema seals, support the dance only to the dance music. halls and ice rinks, and contribute #substantial share to the profits of the elgarette Industry.

'Sub-Human'

vota.

and

50 A Day

17.

A boy at the same social level

carn

The Film Drug

and

that

some-

sintle

UOTES: "The time has come Qfor Americans to think thing good about themselves.”—Ex-" Prealdont Herbert Hoover. ..."! am convinced that the majority of own' conclusions, hasty and has at least one strong inducement M

business men are law- American superficial though they may be, abiding citizens."--Senator to self-improvement: he expects to

Homer "Just his living for the rest of his tell me that it is useless to tamper Capchart . .

once I wouk! of the girls smuke heavily. Ife, and to raise one's level is with the present generation that is like to sea Tom Dewey with his Bonte as many as 50 cigarettes usually to raise one's wages.

"rising 20": almost useless to hair rumpled, a gravy stain on his day by the time they are

synthetic The girl has no such inducement, tamper with the next, now brieflyvest,

and that we wiped oft hia face."Tallulah WHAT, by Miss Jephcott's careful Cigarettes, cosmetics and the cinema since she is destined to a lifetime of conßned to school;

understanding estimate", absorb most of their spending money, work in the one essential Job which must start our sapping and mining Bankhead. are they like?

much deeper down. and one of their countless advantages pays no wages.

The four or six years of life. At the housing level, for in- Tho answer, at first hearing, is of having a "steady boy" from the so depressing to anyone who sets earliest possible age is that he pays then, which Miss Jephcoll's survey stance, until homes without adequate DUSINESS. A Washington builder covers are a brief, noth-like period space and privacy are unknown. In D reported so much buyer resistance store by such things 19 popular for so much.

which adven the public houses,

could to expensive new housing (£4,000 education, that many people

Drink la a will

a problem for some of the of freedom and emotional perhaps find it easy to toss

grounds for six rooms) that he is equipping the girls, on

which they apparently get ture-all these girls will never know easily be better meeting

house passionate for youth then they

In the the garages of all his new hopeless!" Look-aside with an "Oh,It's little help from older people. Many of the

of their "boys" drink and smoke too existence which Hollywood and cinema, which is the ONLY-channel with a new car valued at £500. The modern girl-God

have through which these girls are pre- now an acceptes their two-penny help much, and it is

pared to receive an idea, and which

TOME: American mothers can. us," was one comment offered me thing for giris of 18 and younger to misled them to expect.

Married life will not be like at present distorts and deforms HOME by an intelligent man who had read go to public-houses.

that; particularly married life as them with consolezs overstimula- now buy a plastic the book.

Sexual experience before marriage "And yet they have the vote!" is the rule rather than the exception they will know it, straitened by tion, like a drug which could west-bottle for their babies which, says

and that overcrowding derfully benclit, 'and, Instead, the manufacturer, saves - piece of data which Miss Jeph- poverty

the mother, Many and lack of privacy which inevitably degrades. colt sensibly does not stress,

deplored another.

Both clearly felt that the working of them are married by 10, and very class girl, lost in her nim-struck ignorance and her sexy daydreams, was for all practleol purposes sub- early twenties.

kuman.

It wa

lew remain unmarried past the

Like the females of primitive

was depressing, and there was tribes, they are never in doubt about nothing to be done.

Is indeed. That their function in life, and are

Depressing It

50

grotesque.

and romantic

love-books

arc.

throwaway

'Where are we going?' asks

South Africa

Malan

the whites

work for

is yet another idea which seems in danger of foundering.

Although the Government has warned prospective settlers that unless they comply with screening

No complaints

Those Britons who have arrived

no means unheard, for they state their views freely on any subject in

feverishly bent, from the age of is nothing to be done 1

puberty, on achieving marriage, that cannot quite agree; but first let us they will accept the least promising examine Miss Jephcott's findings, of husbands-unemployables, drunk- based on her study (pursued over ards, even-rather than not marry.

The provision of separate rail arrangements they may be. refused two years) of 103 ordinary

giris

In As primitive societies, to them HERE is a curious atmos-

whites, which admittance, all British citizens have In three

different working-class the unmarried woman

phere of suspended anima- way carriages for

has been extended to the Cape, a legal right of entry to the Union environments—an industrial town, &

Face Value

tion throughout South Africa. has been accepted by the coloured and need no permit to remain. mining village and Central Lon-

with little show of don area.

THIS survey is bitter food for the as though people are waiting community The girls, she finds, are almost educationist, the do-gooder, the for some expected blow to fall. resistance.

Of 10,000 coloured people who completely ignorant of, and in- feminist, the believer in progress; I have tried to analyse this, and

use the local lines daily, only different to, everything that is going rich meat for all their cynical op- I think it is the result of the threat handful have objected to the ex- have no complaints. They are by

world on in the

outside thele ponents, Bitter, that is, for the one of "calamity

and woe" which we tent of Invading the "white",

would follow and rich for the other so long as the were assured personal circle,

im- Their dominating, almost their data are taken only et their face mediately Dr.

and his sole interests between the ages of value, and provided the reader does Cabinet Ministers 1ook their seats had to the new system was almost the daily Press, and their sense of nationality remains strong and 14 and 20 ого their personal not, like Miss Jephcott, probe inquiron the Government benches.

the Com- So far all has been surprisingly appearance, boys, and money. They ingly and without prejudice below

leadership maybe a trifle defont. quiet.

The country is quiet, if expec are almost always bored with their the surface.

of coloured The fery, bitter, bad-tempered work, whatever it is, regarding a

objected to separate tant, and as far as I can judgu not For there are Боле very odd Dr. Malan has vanished. In hin People whe

discontented. job only as a distasteful interlude

things about these working-class | place is

stout

has warned well-dressed, between leaving school and geting girls with their

I consider that by this action Smuts cinema-going and moderate statesman debating calmly. The only thing in favour of any chain-moking, their stylised and reasonably, and sometimes rullan the Communists have hastened the Government's Intention to amend day when the party will be out- the Act of Union, and to remove and terrifying hair-do's, their ignorance|ly. job is the money it

every degree of franchise from the pays,

lawed. and apathy, their boy-mnd be-

non-whites,

allenate will

South There is little variation of policy, therefore the type of work is 4 matter of indifference.

in regard to the Indian quesilon Africa from the rest of the world.

of South Africa's

But, major

us the new Government'a headaches.

revolutionary theories are modified under parliamentary pressure, the public as yet sees no cause to get properly alarmed.

married.

Cinoma First

haviour.

It is odd, for instance, that at 18

and present

a

Well liked

Coaches.

Whatever objection

Instantly stifled when munist Party assumed of the smali

coaches.

one

section

or 20 when they marry, they turn His Ministers are well liked in CAREER is never thought of, into working-class wives and mothers the Lobby. They get around opening

shows. differen! art:

addressing culturn) A naturally, since every girl means. Disney embrace a laborious bodies modestly and without heal.

Most clamorous

'to give up her, job on marriage.

The Indians Their attitude is unexpected and

the are disillusioning lif

most Even nursing, for which many of and often deeply

for full! them would have a natural apil-in which the rearing of children surprisingly quietening. Yet the air clamorous of any section

and endless cooking, washing, iron.

of suspense remains,

political representation, which, it is yet. Many of the new Government's obvious, they will never carried

get here

UNO.

tude, is rarely considered, since ing and cleaning are they think it

ludicrous to enter on without respite Into middle-age, nudi a three-year period of training late as 18, and, besides, it would often in most discouraging condi

منا

tions.

that

tho

As I see it, the testing time is not

Undoubtedly the Nationalists are

no hurry.

pot theories have undergone drastic no matter what is said or done at heading for a republic, but there is

pre-elec-

capital,

Govern-

Union prosperous

THE

SHANGRILA BALL

in aid of

The Boys & Girls' Clubs Association

(Under the distinguished patronage of

H.E. Sir Alexander Grantham, K.C.M.G. & Lady Grantham)

AT THE

HONG KONG HOTEL

ON

MONDAY, NOVEMBER

DANCING

15TH

CABARET

1948

COSTUME CONTESTS

and

Other Special Displays

Champagne Corner

etc., etc.

TICKETS:

(including dinner)

Double Single

$50

$30

A limited number of floorside tables are available at $10 a seat. Bookings, Reservations & Tickets obtainable at the Hong Kong Hotel on and after October 20th,

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The British Piano of the BBC

modification.

Tako the Nationalists'

The Indians have turned Natal take up valuable time which could

tion policy of complete segrega- Province into what is practically Indlan colony. From Natal be spent in courtlag.

A family of ten people, including tion-the separation of the whites an

The Union is prosperous; It can Domestic service is regarded with a young couple and children, living and the blacks, the bronzed and the northwards to the Sudan borders almost obsessional obborrence, in four rooms, is not unusual. Homes yellows.. The Government now they are streaming in, raising large pay its way: food is plentiful; crops since the girls have no Interest in with no sink, no gas, no indoor knows what everyone else ap- familles, living on a daily handful are excellent, and for the Nationalists the domestic pris and regard it as lavatory and no garden are quite parently knew long ago: It won't of rice and supplied with unlimited power is sweet. essential to happiness to be at the common. Overcrowding is the rule work.

Smuts has said he believes the cinema or out with boys at least and privacy unknown.”

The relegation to the reserves of In South Africa they have been Government will go to the country -six nights a week.

Many young wives, faced with the Africans would deprive vital checked on the Natal borders, and shortly-maybe early next year to TWO NEW UPRIGHT MODELS Nothing that can

even these almost hopeless odds, fail to industries and forms of cheap la- the polley of the Malan.

ment-backed by overy European classed as "educational" make a clean and tolerable

try to increase its majority. home, bout.

I believe that, with the moderato has the

the faintest attraction for them, but, many, almost miraculously, It is apparent that official policy in the country-is to send all those

Africa back to example set thus for by the present today is the retention as permanent Indians in Bouth

before them, Government

an in- residents in Eurobean areas of vost: India no matter what it costs. One Aim

numbers of detribalised Africans. There has been no discrimina electorate will give them your INDEED, the more one learns of But though Africans will re- tion against the Jews, but a car-creased majorily.

remains

Only then, in my view, will the the married lives of theso - girls' | main In close contact with the tain nervousness mothers, the moro extraordinary lordly palefaces, they will have no them which contributes to this senso Nationalist machine be geared for does it seem that the girls them- | franchise whatever,

the im- of waiting for something to hap an all-out return to the halcyon and Rising Twenty: Notes on Some aelves should be Boeinglo plications are so loaded with poll- pong

dident of the Boer Republic of Paul Ordinary Girls. By Pearl Jephcott, mindedly, so feverishly bent on ileal dynamite that many Europeans The Nationalist plan to screen all Kruger's day.

ALAN FORREST (Faber and Faber, 8r.:6d.),

are apprehensive for the future. intending immigrants from Britain

roughly

Even the newsreel at the

is the accepted time

back, and chatting

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gl.ting

with

for

early marriage..

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