Page 59 - 1925 September - To Dragma

48 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

A L I F E ON T H E OCEAN WAVE is no idle boast for Joanna Carver Colcord as

*• • almost the whole of her first eighteen years of life were spent aboard
her father's sailing vessel. This personal contact with the sea later lead her
to compile one of the first authoritative collections of American sea chanties,
Roll and Go, which came out last year. Besides this, she is the author of
several books on sociological subjects, among them Broken Homes. During
the war she had charge of public health work in the Virgin Islands under
the Red Cross. For some time she has been Superintendent of the New
York Associated Charities, but September 15 she took up her new duties
as General Secretary of the Family Welfare Association of Minneapolis.
The article, Professional Volunteers in Social Work which appears in this
issue of To DRAGMA is the text of the speech which she gave at convention.

A WEIGHTY MATTER

WE HAVE been asked to answer a question alleged to be announced for
discussion at the Christian Endeavor Convention at Portland, Oregon:
"Can a girl roll her stockings and still be a Christian?" This reminds us
of the question, "Can a man be a Christian on a thousand a year?'' the
answer being, "We do not see how he can afford to be anything else."

As to the first, we think she can if she gives her heart and mind to the
matter; the highest success requires both. The human knee, after infancy,
is not alluring as a spectacle and we do not take it seriously—not as we
did when hanging across mother's—even though our girls are getting kneesier
and kneesier to look at. If, as a London physician asserts, their scanty garb
tends to make them healthy, then they must also be getting healthier and
healthier. We hazard a guess that the individual who proposed this weighty
topic was past forty, but you never can tell. It may have been some "lovely
boy" in long, baggy trousers.

"Nowadays," says Punch, "a boy cannot hide behind his mother's skirts,
but he can hide behind his father's Oxford bags." Rebecca West, while
admitting that the skirt is feminine, declares that she never yet has come
across a woman so effeminate as to want to wear two skirts, which the
Oxford trousers are, to which Duff Cooper replies that he has never heard
of a man who so desired to become effeminate that he was prepared to wear
one trouser instead of two, which the modern skirt is.

This looks like the impact of the proverbial irresistible force and the
immovable body. We prefer a large-minded tolerance. Let the girls roll
their stockings and the boys wear the skirts of their choice. They will do it,
anyhow and the less it is protested the sooner it will be over. It is five
decades since youths at Yale tried to set a similar style, so we may as well
be calm.

Alpha Phi Quartet ly.