The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

February, 19 2 1 21 kisses. He still wants to do the pursuing, the capturing, the love-making. Then he wants sympathy, response, loyalty, with an adequate number of kisses thrown in for good measure. "There are American men who enjoy playing the Turk on occasion, and some of them had the opportunity in Europe after the armistice. But they soon got sick of it and packed their little doll rags and came home. As one upstanding doughboy expressed it: 'Them mademoiselles is all right for a novelty. They wait on a fellow hand and foot. They flatter his vanity. But how long can a man stand that sort of thing? Where's his self-respect gone ? And what's he going to do after a few months of it? Why, strangle 'em — that's what! Doggone it, a man wants to know he's a man ; and those dames leave a fellow nothing to do !' "I explained to those misguided ladies as well as I could that the American man and the American girl understood one another perfectly, were suited to one another temperamentally; and while gallantry may have prompted the men of the A. E. F. to tell French girls: 'Home was never like this!' — on coming home they assured their mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts that France was never like home. That if they thought large numbers of those men were going to expatriate themselves, give up their citizenship, relinquish their ideas and ideals, to be obliging, or to marry money abroad, they were very much mistaken. Love and money combined would hardly induce the worth-while American to cut loose from home and country. "If foreign women knew just a little of American history they would see the very good reasons why the American man has his woman up on a pedestal, instead of under his heel. Every human being in the world is a product' of heredity, environment, training, education, traditions. The same influences that moulded the American male produced the female of the species. Therefore, she comes nearer being his woman than any other woman in the world. It is because of these inheritances and traditions, and not because of the 'softness' of her men folk, that she enjoys a unique position of equality, superiority, even, which was tacitly acknowledged long before she won the vote. This -supremacy is the despair and envy of her continental sisters, who cannot trace the why of it or reason from condition back to cause. "The American woman did not start life as a dependent, a parasite, a toy, a plaything, or a drudge. She was not left, locked securely in convent or castle, while her men folk sallied forth to conquer the world for her. Neither was she enslaved, along with her husband and children, to toil in the fields, and pay tribute to some overlord. She started out, shoulder to shoulder, with her man. Side by side they fought the Indians, side by side they conquered the wilderness. He did a man's work, in the clearing and in the forest. She worked as hard, or harder, in the cabin; and if it was drudgery, as it often was, she knew that it was only her share. In addition she bore the children, and reared them. Of course she was admitted to the councils of the family, and indirectly, to those of the nation. Her man believed in her, had faith in her. He trusted to her taste, her instincts, her judgment. He depended on her to set that 'spiritual' example which he had been taught to believe in — to keep the white name' burning, despite perils and poverty, to transmit to his children that mysterious essence termed 'soul.' "What Sort of a creature would he have been to have turned on her, and said: 'What do you know? Keep still. Your place is in the kitchen. Stay there.' Or, 'You did no more than your duty in sharing my burdens when times were hard. But it's made you too practical, too common-sensical, too matter-of-fact. You don't appeal to my aesthetic taste any more. Now that we're fairly well-to-do, and I have leisure, I prefer the doll-type of woman, with sawdust in her head instead of brains.' We have no such inheritances, no such traditions, to 'live up to' in this country. The American woman started out as a partner, or pal ; and a partner, a pal, she has remained. "Good comradeship in pioneer days, mutual acceptance of Puritan and Quaker principles and habits of life, profound faith in America and the greatness of her destiny, as evidenced in the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution, made their imprint on every mind, regardless of sex. If the average American girl has a streak of Puritanism, of Quaker, of reserve, of modesty in her, so has the average American man. If she is capable, fearless, independent, it is because they learned those ways together, in the long-ago. Those in this country who laugh at the old traditions, who pretend to be shocked by the frankness, the social boldness of the American girl, and, on the other hand, repelled or flabbergasted by her assumption of virtue and her determination to establish a single moral standard, are those whose ancestors came to these shores after these supremely important evolutionary stages were past. They did not experience them, have not been influenced by them, and do not understand them. "The American man is not an angel; and neither is his woman. But both are working toward better things. Both have inherited consciences and both have a healthy sense of sin. They have known from the beginning that the saloon introduced a vicious element into American life. The man who patronized it was sure to be visited later {Continued on page 50) Witzel, L. A.