.
Even on the stage new and more natural traditions are beginning
to prevail in Europe. It is not many years since an English
actress regarded as a calumny the statement that she appeared on
the stage bare-foot, and brought an action for libel, winning
substantial damages. Such a result would scarcely be possible
to-day. The movement in which Isadora Duncan was a pioneer has
led to a partial disuse among dancers of the offensive device of
tights, and it is no longer considered indecorous to show many
parts of the body which it was formerly usual to cover.

It should, however, be added at the same time that, while
dancers, in so far as they are genuine artists, are entitled to
determine the conditions most favorable to their art, nothing
whatever is gained for the cause of a wholesome culture of
nakedness by the "living statues" and "living pictures" which
have obtained an international vogue during recent years. These
may be legitimate as variety performances, but they have nothing
whatever to do with either Nature or art. Dr. Pudor, writing as
one of the earliest apostles of the culture of nakedness, has
energetically protested against these performances
(_Sexual-Probleme_, Dec., 1908, p. 828). He rightly points out
that nakedness, to be wholesome, requires the open air, the
meadows, the sunlight, and that nakedness at night, in a music
hall, by artificial light, in the presence of spectators who are
themselves clothed, has no element of morality about it. Attempts
have here and there been quietly made to cultivate a certain
amount of mutual nakedness as between the sexes on remote country
excursions. It is significant to find a record of such an
experiment in Ungewitter's _Die Nacktheit_. In this case a party
of people, men and women, would regularly every Sunday seek
remote spots in woods or meadows where they would settle down,
picnic, and enjoy games. "They made themselves as comfortable as
possible, the men laying aside their coats, waistcoats, boots and
socks; the women their blouses, skirts, shoes and stockings.
Gradually, as the moral conception of nakedness developed in
their minds, more and more clothing fell away, until the men wore
nothing but bathing-drawers and the women only their chemises. In
this 'costume' games were carried out in common, and a regular