The Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Page
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fiv Thompson
Mrs. Henry J. Delaval Astley,
Formerly Mi May Kinder
of Manayunk, Philadelphia,
the Last American Chorus Girl to Marry Into English
Fashionable Society.
Dr. William Lee Howard,
the Weil-Known Social
Philosopher, Finds War the
Reason Why Wedding
Bells Have Stopped Ringing
for a Class" of Women
Formerly in
Great Demand as Wives
By William Lee Howard, M. D.
The Distinguished Social Philosopher.
' .... " ' ' . ' .
. voir-
Vt 1
IN the past year there have been almost
no marriages of chorus girls. Even
those girls who found happy mar
riages in mating with men of moderate
means and those who work dally, are not
being followed to the altar. In fact,
there has been almost a complete stop
page of marriage among a class of young
women heretofore in demand as wives.
Also there are a greater number of
unemployed chorus girls .than in any
period known to the modern stage. Even
during financial panics, during the lean
years when retrenchment is necessary,
the chorus girl has had no difficulty in
obtaining positions. But to-day she is
struggling the best she knows how to
make an honorable living.
Strange as it may at first appear, the
causes are due to the war and not to any
fault of the young .women. .Neither is it .
due to any experiences proving the un
fitness of these girls to fulfill wifely
duties.
Quite the contrary. The majority of
girls going from stage to, the domestic
hearth have been successes. These girls
differ from the girls brought up In family
seclusion or in worldly society, in one
matter only they have had experience
which either makes or breaks them. In
the majority of cases It makes them,
causes them to value a good reputation,
to sense the true from the false, to
recognise hypocrisy, to appreciate a home
and all that this word means. The few
who go "the easiest way," the excep
tions whose frailties are given publicity,
are no more numerous or unmoral than
those in other walks of life. To come
out with the blunt fact not nearly so
numerous.
The war has had a greater and wider
effect In the United States than Is gener
ally recognized. It has had a tremendous
effect upon our social and national insti
tutions, as well as upon individuals.
Putting aside Its good and its injurious
effects upon business and financial
affairs, the world war has brought about
moving psychologic factors and states In
those who believed themselves to be In
different to it
No normal, active man or woman can
remain uninfluenced by the outburst of
ancestral blood lust now dominating the
greater part of the civilised world. There
is no such mental state as neutrality
among those who have brains to think
and hearts to suffer. The individual who
talks loudly about being strictly neutral
is lying to his real, inner self and he
is now commencing to know It. Uttering
statements coming from tongue, and
forced from an unwilling mind, injures
the true self. One cannot be untrue to
self and be loyal to self any more than
on can lie about a neighbor behind his
back and praise him to his face.
At the beginning of the war many men
tried to be neutral in words while really
they were partisans In mind and feel
ings. The effect was mental restlessness,
uneasy conscience. This attitude brought
new thoughts, strange self-inspection;
finally, among those with decent brains
and conscience, a new mental life.
But what has all
this to do with the
slump in the marriage
of chorus girls T A
great deal. Follow
the mental and social
trail as I mark It and
you will see.
No matter what
sort of social state -man
lives in, however,
much he may have
progressed in cultur
ed and moral attain
ments, he still retains
the primitive instincts
of his savage ances
tors. That is, man to
progress must do so
upon the foundations
nature furnished.
The foundations (s
the instinct to fight
for home, family and
country. This may be
temporarily suppress
ed. It' Is, as man pro
gresses. It Is also
controlled and gov
erned by reason and
a desire to preserve
honor through every
self-respecting means.
But there comes a
time when only the
primitive method will
avail; then man must
fight If he is to have
and to hold.
Now, given a
country such as the
United States the
only one of its kind
where present men
and tbelr sons hare
never been brought
face to face with dan
ger to homes, wives
and daughters; where
energy has been used
to accumulate dollars
and the mind of the
young men turned to
methods of spending
these dollars, and we
have a brain soil upon'
which can be implanted such new and
strange seeds of anxiety as to drive out
all the old indifference and ways of view
ing life.
Gradually, but surely, the men of this
country have had their thoughts turned
into new channels. Men or all ages and
conditions have been on a tense mental
strain the past year. This tension Is in
creasing in force. Hourly excited,
anxious, uncertain, not knowing what the
next day will bring to them, is causing
a state of seriousness and a realisation
that the future is perilous and that the
old order of living will be forced out of
the land.
Men go to the theatre, but talk war
or rush to read the bulletins between
acts. They greet tbelr women friends in
the same outward manner of old, but way
down deep in their hearts and gripping
tbelr minds is a feeling of uncertainty.
...
ft
Lily Elsie, T,ow Mr. Ian Bullough, the Last Famous English
Beauty to Enter Matrimony Before the War Cut Off
the Market Both in England and America.
They are not In any mental condition to
think of Quietude, of taking on the re
sponsibilities of a married man.
A man whose house and property are in
the slightest danger of being taken from
him does not go oft in search of a wife
nor does he spend bis time In thinking
of such matters. And no matter how re
mote such a fate may seem to some, the
fear and anxiety is in the air and affects
the motorman as well as the millionaire.
The men who under normal conditions
have the mental quietude to woo and con
template marriage are now mourning
friends upon the battle fields, some are
nobly occupied in hospitals or driving
ambulances, others are striving to help
In various ways. The public would be
astounded if it knew the number of
wealthy and well-to-do young American
men with the armies. Here in our
country thousands of this type of
young men are In Instruction camps, thou
sands are getting in condition to go to
them now and to-morrow; older, but
marriageable men are using their time
and energy to forewarn and wake up the
lethargic of this land.
It is a great change in our past social
state. It is a state of mind new to us.
Men are now thinking In a martial way;
not marital. War has brought about a
national restlessness which affects every
full blooded man. There is an Indefinable
Impression of a serious life ahead of us
all. It is a Seriousness heretofore lack
ing in tho men of America.
In the days of our early ancestors
and in the savage races to-day no young
man is permitted to marry or to woo a
maiden until be has been in battle. We
have abolished these really admirable
laws, but nature has not. We cannot
change nature's laws unless we can
change all the laws of biologic origin.
It Uunger threatens, the biologic inBtluct
to get ready to protect takes hold of
man.
Kub-consclouBly the same law works in
women. They do not want for a husband
and father of their children a man who
in times of danger thinks more of mar
riage than in fitting himself tor marriage
-and this means to them proving fit to
U'fend wife and home.
Stage girls do not differ In any way
from any other girls they are endowed
with all the primitive Instincts of the
first woman. Most of them are true to
the female mould to the core.
In some details the present state of
anxiety - affects women more intensely
than ,men.
The woman lives In the present. Bhe
takes the shortest , way out of trouble;
she fixes her eyes upon what is before
her. Man sees beyond; often overlooks
the thing at his feet. Under these cir
cumstances a woman's counsel is valu
able, for she can bring us to the right
perspective. i ,
Women are quick to be moved by sug
gestion; tbey see things in the concrete.
A girl misses her admirer and discovers
he is off to be trained for a soldier's duty.
This appeafa to her, and another young
man equally acceptable, but indifferent
to his country's needs, will be refused as
husbaud. ' .
Men preparing for war think only of
war. In the United States the mental
attitude la a subjective one, but neverthe
less an operating one. The real man says
to himself; "If war conies, what ought
1 to do?" The man to-day who hangs
around the stage door or sends his motor
car around to the girl's flat la not wanted
by the right kind of girl. She knows in
her woman's heart there Is something for
him to do. If he is one who would make
a good bubband he certainly must be oc
cupied by other thoughts than wooing
An' Unusual Pose by. M!u
Margaret Hallan, ' arr English
Footlight Star, Whose Engage
ment to the Viscount Renuen
Was Ended by Hia Death on
the Battlefield.
and spending. It is nature's way of pre
paring the warrior. Through- this way
he is physically and morally prepared.
All these conditions have brought
earnestness to the. young women of tha
stage who are worth while. It Is a
psychologic law that dangers threaten
ing mon and country affect' sub-consciously
all active women. These no
longer strive to unduly attract; thought
less frivolity is suppressed. There is an
earnestness among the mentally bright
girls of the stage to-day never before
seen In this country. In a milder form It
Is the Same psychlo state affecting all
the men and women of Europe serious
things to think and do.
A young man in Paris, Berlin or Lon
don who will pursue a chorus girl even
for marriage will get short shrift. If he
la too cowardly to fight, she doesn't want
htm; it he has been declared physically
unfit, she won't have him. . ; '
It is the same here in the passive state.
The real man Is mentally on watch for
the probable. He has no time for those
things one can Indulge in when the door
is locked and all is safe.
It may seem a bit humorous to some to
speak of the chorus girl becoming serious
unde r any conditions free from worry and
waqt. but such do not realize that un
derneath every woman is an Inherent
instinct to know and realize danger to
her and hers.. To-day she is demonstrat
ing her inborn and rightful Inheritance,
for she does not wilfully demand that
man shall woo her when he has serious
duties to perform for his country and Its
women.
So that the reason chorus girls are
not niarryiug is that man has ether Im
portant matters on his mind and the
young women are aiding him to work
them out.
Copyright, 1913. by th Star Compsiry. Ort Britain hichti H
