stincts, played a part in this phenomenon of fascination. A larger part was played by the unsettling of social conventions and restraints. That girls and young women whose lives had been most formal should suddenly be permitted to be free-for-all dancing partners for men of most miscellaneous sorts, whose names even the girls often did not know, was possibly not important in itself; but it is a significant index of the terrible upheaval in social conventions which the war brought.
The rapid and expected shifting of personnel undoubtedly contributed its share to the unsettling of the moral bonds of women, as it did to that of the men. Women, surrounded by strange men, under conditions facilitating unaccustomed informality, and rapid personal acquaintance and selection; and knowing that these men are shortly to be moved away, with slight possibility for future reencounters; find the maximally favorable conditions for slipping the leash of continence. This effect was produced not only on reckless girls of the type which tend to go “astray” at all times, but also on more mature and more circumspect women who under ordinary peace conditions would never have considered such license as even a remote possibility for themselves.
Whether the fire of license which flamed during the war will contribute to other conflagrations
