This was the period which saw the birth of Free Body Culture: those fabulous years between 1900 and 1914. It must be admitted however, that those were years of an extremely delicate and shy childhood. It was not so much the comic-opera mustached Berlin police who gave trouble as the overzealous busybodies who looked on themselves as the self-appointed guardians of Berlin morals. In fact, if the first decade of this century hod not seen the popularisation of athletics and the spread of the fresh air and swimming cults, naturism's early years would have been spent in a far more intemperate climate. What a pity that so few mosaics have come to us from those early days of the nudist movement. All we have are some books and magazines devoted to the subject.

It is no exaggeration to maintain that nude bathing in small intimate circles could never be prohibited or banned. At any rate it "existed" at the beginning of the new century and that was that. There was no need to invent the practice of mixed social nudity but a means had to be found for bringing those interested into contact with one another.

The magazine "Health and Beauty" first published in 1902 provided a strong momentum in this direction. The paper was devoted to air-bathing, physical culture and similar things. An even stronger influence was exercised by the monthly entitled "Beauty" which came out in 1903 under the direction of Karl Vanselow. Vanselow was mainly concerned with cultivating physical beauty, care of the body and reform of the strict clothing conventions prevalent at the time. He particularly desired a change in women's dress. Men's minds were excited by the new and pure relationship which was revealed by the naked "Homo Sapiens" and the subject of nude bathing. This very theme cropped up in the first and second years of publication and inspired many readers to written and verbal discussion.

We find, for instance, in volume IV/5 that a man, with his whole menage of seven persons (Husband, Wife, Son of 18 years, Housemaid aged 24, Adopted Daughter aged 22, Daughter aged 17, and Daughter aged 15) "have already been taking completely nude air-baths for the last eight years". The same reader says "all persons including servants take part, all housework and individual employment are carried out in the nude and clothing thus plays a comparatively small role in our thoughts". Someone else calls for clothing reform "through good example in public". "Let us go in straggling groups "he advises" when the official Sunday parade is taking place in the High Street. Let the men break the ice to be followed by the women. Shorts, sleeveless shirts, and no ties should be order of the day. The ladies might be clad in open blouses, have naked thighs and sandalled feet" (Quoted from 111/5).

The (rather unnecessarily inflated) readers' forum brought the subscribers of "Beauty" into family friendships and social contact with one another. But there were few who actually advertised for contacts. No estimate can now be made of the number of such nudist circles that existed in 1904/05 in the Berlin area, within the German Realm, or in the neighbouring countries.

The enterprising publisher of "Beauty", how-ever, was not content to rest on his oars and provided his readers with a chance of spending "relaxation hours" on a private island in the Havel river near the city. "The Rest-House stands in several acres of meadowland and beech-trees. Air and water baths may be had without your being subject to the gaze of curious prying eyes." Thus the announcement which graced the pages of "Beauty" in those for off days early in this century. A short time later friends of air and light were proposing the foundation of a naturist settlement and many building plans were discussed (copy 111/9).

It was in that year, too that Professor G. Herman issued his famous proclamation "Nudo-Natio" which concluded with the words "Forward, you who have been born naked, you Nudo-Nati. Which of you has the courage to declare himself openly to the community of the naked, to the Nudo-Natio-Alliance (ANNA)?" So it was that the "Naked Lodge" of the general Nudo-Natio-Alliance came into being. It was an association destined to embrace three "friendship grades". The aims seem grotesque and bloated to-day and ANNA did not exist for very long. The other lodges (Hellas, Valhalla, Swastika) had a longer life before they, too, ran on the rocks but remained the subject of ridicule because of their absurd ideals. The "Naked Lodges" had their location in Berlin but enjoyed much support from sympathisers from outside the city. Very few women took part and their proportion of the total figures must have been extremey small. (This article only purports to speak about the development of nudism in Berlin up to the year 1914. Richard Ungewitter's activities in Stuttgart are a chapter of nudist history in themselves).

The advertisement supplement to the magazine "Beauty" in the days before the first world war repays study: "Take a cure while you sleep in Dr. Steiner's Paradise beds" "Karl Braun supplies reform-corsets, health bodices, camiknickers and also the well-known reform-knickers." "Buy Dr. Kissing's cigars. Recommended for all smokers allergic to nicotine". "ULIN prevents your hair falling out". "Salem Aleikum cigarettes have no expensive packing. All the cost goes into the cigarette itself".

A prominently placed advertisement stated that the "first Swiss light-and-air-home is now open. Nudism and Nude airbaths may be taken and you may lead a life in general consonance with the laws of nature. At Waidberg near Zurich. The owner and director is Th. Stern (retired Pastor)."

The foundation of the Nudo-Natio lodges had been a step outside the mere family gatherings but it was not until 1909 that a group appeared which resembled our modern clubs and which might almost be termed a "nudist club". This was the "Freya League" with its headquarters in Berlin. The statutes dated 23rd March 1909, state that "the aim of the league is to promote natural physical culture on a scientific, healthy and aesthetic basis" in the following ways:

a) Lectures and discussions on questions arising from all relevant spheres of knowledge and art.

b) Care of the body by means of nude mixed sporting events and games carried out in accordance with the rules of the league.

c) Reports and exchange of opinions in the national journal and the arranging of correspondence between members throughout the realm. Political aims of any kind are strictly banned".

The Nudo-Natio may have been the inspiring factor for all this but as it remained strictly in the background nothing stood in the way of registering the association as an official body. The President was Medical Superintendent Dr. Koster, a very well-known man of his time. The league thought to realise its aims and ideals through small groups as had hitherto been the case. No one envisaged the possibility of being able to interest larger circles of the population in the proposals. Naturist grounds in the sense that we understand them today were not yet available to the Freya League. A temporary solution to the problem was found in a private park placed at the League's disposal by a well-wisher. This property lay near the Berlin suburban railway at Zossen. During the wintertime the members of Freya rented a boxing gymnasium on a half-day basis for airbaths. One well-known example was in Hermesdorf.

The lonely rocks of the Swedish sea resort of Ronneby were to the few nudists of that time what the Mediterranean nudist beaches are to the sun-loving naturists of today. There were many at the turn of the century who well realised the health angle of nudism; they could perceive the great advantages of being able to expose the body to air and sun. But social or conventional considerations prevented them from giving support. Indeed, it took a lot of courage for eight men and two women to meet for a naked sunbath on a Sunday morning. One nudist veteran of those days, recalls: "I knew a Berlin group which had many male members. But only one single girl took part in the mixed nude air baths. She was quite young and obviously could never mention the matter at home. When she got engaged to a Professor of Theology (I) we never saw her again. Other girls appeared from time to time and were quite willing to allow us men strip naked in their presence but were unwilling themselves to take off the final piece of underclothing."

Wilhelm Kostner, a ladies' tailor, was the moving spirit among the sunfriends in Berlin during the last five or six years before the first World War. Kostner got to know the movement well during the days of the lodges and had seen their failure. But he became one of the founding fathers of the Freya League and when that organisation was dissolved in 1912 he presided at the birth of its successor: the "Monboddo League". This was transformed into the Air Bathing Association of Berlin, which actually played a part in the stormy development of the nudist movement in the immediate post-war years. Kdstner founded a publishing business and made considerable financial sacrifices for the growing naturist community. His magazine "Friend of Light" was a really grandiose conception for its day because of its excellent quality but it did not last for long. There was a loss of about $ 5,000 in today's money. Then a book called "Struggle" came from his presses; there was a second "Call to Women" and a further series of booklets from 1913 onwards. There was even a nudist novel with the title "Antonie's Experiences" written by F. A. Helmer. All from Kostner's publishing house.

Here are the words of one of Kostner's con-temporaries: "It is solely due to Kostner that the movement held together. Even during the world war meetings still took place in a large confectioner's shop. Every friend of light was also welcome to the large hospitable room behind the great Ladies' Tailoring Salon. The few of us who were not at the front (I had re-turned to the homeland wounded) were able to practice nudism on his grounds at Kapenick during the summer of 1915. It is a pity that this idealist who made such heavy financial sacrifices for the movement did not live to see its triumphant spread in the post-war years. But he died of a stomach disease brought on during the days of the hunger blockade in the summer of 1918."

There is no doubt that Wilhelm Kostner was one of the most prominent pioneers of the naturist movement and today's devotees should never forget him.

We must learn to understand clothing and being clothed anew; that is one thing. The other is to apply this understanding through free decision.

It is basically a materialistic viewpoint which has made fashion into a flexible instrument. Man's natural need for clothing has stamped it as questionable by various "fashionable" tricks and has warped the state of being clothed into a lascivicious procedure of disrobing; in other words, the instinct-driven animal in man has let it loose on man's reason, which usually judges by the standards of purposefulness and beauty. Whatever wants to protect, beautify - perhaps with merciful intention - to clothe human judgment, sells itself up to a screaming, present day publicity according to the law of supply and demand.

Then the clothing oneself follows an inner and suitable inclination, for the human body is already dress and covering in itself. The physical body is a covering - that is indeed nothing new - but it is a covering among others. It holds out the mental form of the human being as the vessel its contents, the encircling bud-leaves the tender flower structure. But as we know we are not satisfied with just the dead body. We demand that it be interwoven with a soul and life structures. One could actually speak of finer "bodies" - even of those which appear as carriers of life and soul. The intellectual teachings of the East and West clarify that for us further. According to that we live in a complex organization and as living, feeling humans wear clothing of quite diverse materials. This thought, perhaps at first alien to us, will be more evident when we reflect that a pleasing exterior does not always offer a guarantee of satisfactory intelligence. In meeting we bring with us a secret which to a great extent is independent from the physical. And it is not always corporeal merits which make the nearness or environs of a person pleasant or repulsive to us. Therefore we can't be surprised, either, when not all people are able to show us friendly affection.

Of course it is not sufficient to have indicated a human image according to which this mind-man given to certain coverings, is formed. As member of the world of life, soul and mind this man projects into the cosmic expanses in which there are beings who are able to build contact to our transcendental "body"-covering.

Just one example: We have among others to reckon with the reality that myths and fairy-tales know as the evil and the tempter. It is possibly able to infect our soul-body with lies, hate, envy, greed as viruses and bacilli can do to our physical body. What happens does not only have "local" effects. Even despite our complexity we are a unit. There-fore our whole being suffers from it. A defect clings to us, which no beauty patch, no dress nor fashion creation can hide. What we "have on" in the sphere of the soul (just as we can have on" tattered clothes or clothes in bad taste) shows in our eyes, dominates our thinking and feeling and finally comes out in our behavior. Morality and propriety forbid it in vain. No etiquette can conceal it. We are unmasked before experts of human nature. And as we don't want to commit our-selves in our self avowed knowledge of our insufficiencies, our wearing of clothes takes on a very questionable character.

What finally has happened? The well-dressed man has become completely "naked". Suitable here is the biblical tale which says after the Fall of the first human couple: "And they saw, that they were naked ..." "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed", with these words the Bible indicates a past state of innocence, and we add: state of innocence still possible today. Here is man completely what he is. The old commentators speak of Adam's radiant light-dress in respect to this quotation and circumscribe thus that which is not there from the very beginning without one's own help, but which is exactly the realization of that free decision of will of which we spoke at the beginning.

Decision of will? Plain initiative, good will alone won't do it. Intelligent recognition must precede it. But even vice versa the best intended idea is useless if it can't be incorporated in life and work. Let's look at a child! It plays in light and sun in its loveliest and creation-like dress. What does the child know about being naked? Being undressed is a condition for him just like any other. And lovers who experience the joy of physical nearness, don't they know themselves transplanted back in the reality of paradise? (Here must be added, that the accent should not be placed on "back", for all life must have stability in face of the present and future.) May egoism and filth burden the human conscience again and again and thus injure a free condition of life, a miracle is still possible. A man may deprive himself of the free development of his real being through prejudice and cynicism but a love experience removes all stains. The innocence of paradise's morning is given to him again through his pure partner.

That one can wear the light dress in genuine cheerfulness and freedom of spirit hasn't been a theory for a long time. Only those with evil intentions or those who have simply not dared to do it or who haven't experienced it can say that we want to wear it at all times and at any price. The aforesaid clarifies also that a plain "Nude Culture-Fashion" without the culture and care of the whole person cannot remain spared from clear criticism.

He, however, who has found the way to a new experience in the physical through the recognition of his human existence and in the realization of his possibilities, he will from then on know no worthier human gown than the clothing of his own body and thus will agree with the poet Friedrich von Hardenberg-Novalis, who says:

"There is only one temple in the world and that is the human body. Nothing is holier than this high form. The bowing before man is an homage to this revelation in flesh ... One touches heaven when one touches a human body."

Warm water and cold air have been important medicines of nature from ancient times. Moreover, one finds the combination of hot air and cold water even in antiquity and among peoples of lower cultural levels. The sweat tent with large stones heated in a wood fire was wide spread among the shepherd and hunter cultures of the Asiatic Steppes and among the Indians. Roman authors report similar contrivances among the Teutons, of hot foot baths and free bathing in rivers and lakes.

The invention of the bath tub is attributed to the higher cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and the invention of the shower to the Greeks. The Greek gymnasiums were not only sport places but also bathing places. The tubs were set in niches in the walls. One considered a bath more than pleasure or clean-sing. Homer confirms that the bath can do away with all unusual frames of mind. The Greeks had already made use of the warm mineral springs in the hot springs, and the Romans were true masters in the use of natural hot springs and in the creation of artificial large thermal baths. The famous Doekletians spa held over 3000 people. The baths in the post Christian Roman times, which were often fed from mile long aqua-ducts, were the heart of the Roman settlements, as for example in Trier. Aachen's place as capital of the Frankish kingdom was also due to Charlemagne's preference for itsrefreshing baths. Eginhard, the biographer of the Frankish king, reports of his patron's unbeatable swimming accomplishments.

Bathing came into disrepute here and there for several centuries through the dogmas of the anti-secular church. The crusaders brought the oriental joy in bathing back into favor in the Occident. As the outspoken worldly pleasure no longer followed ritual regulations, the hygienic conditions were more than insufficient; more and more bath houses had to be closed because their visitors got the Lucs (venereal disease) there. The horror of cleanliness went so far that one no longer washed at all in the court of France's Louis XIV, the "sun king"; the unavoidable stink was covered with buckets of perfume. The astounded people, who lived around Elizabeth I said she took a monthly bath "whether she needed it or not!" In the second half of the 18th century the first public bath was reopened in Germany. Approximately a century later followed public baths for women and a further 50 years went by before the family bath was no longer considered objectionable.

In the meantime the old bathing forms were not only maintained in the country and in rural cultures, but also further developed. In the last two decades the hot air bath in the form of the Finnish sauna has again become popular in Europe. From time immemorial the sauna has been the center of culture and health care for the Finns. The Finns were born in the sauna and brought there to die, the saunas being usually situated on the shore or on one of the countless islands of one of the many lakes. It is a thickly planked wood house. In the old form an open fire smoldered in the middle of the room without a chimney. Fat field stones lay in the fireplace and slowly gave off heat. Nowadays this sooty smoke sauna in seldom found; the modern heating techniques have done away with it: A closed oven conducts the smoke up and out and develops the greatest heat in the sauna room. Temperatures of 230F to 245F. are not infrequent in Finland. The sauna plays the same role there as the bath-room does here. One hardly finds a new house without a modern sauna. Even the schools are equipped with saunas.

The Ideal Sauna Arrangement

A correct sauna must consist of the following parts:

1. a heated cloakroom where the clothing can be left free from steam vapors;

2. a room sufficiently large for washing the body with hot and cold water, and a good conductor for carrying off the steam;

3. sweat chamber;

4. cold shower, diving well and foot basin with warm water, perhaps in the wash-room;

5. open air relaxing area; as a substitute a well-aired, dry and cool room with beds;

6. a quiet room.

It is seldom that one finds all these requirements fulfilled. In order to attain a complete sauna effect, one can do without the diving well which can be substituted by the cold shower.

The washroom is to he placed so that the steam does not enter the waiting room, which must definitely have a low rate of humidity. The sweat chamber should be kept about 2'h meters high. It must be wood paneled on all sides and one must be able to completely air it out so that the dampness in the wood can be evaporated. The benches at least 50 cm in width and 50, 100 and 150 centimeters in height should offer enough room for all sauna visitors to lie down. It is recommend-able to make these benches like lattice work so that the air can encircle the body well. For the sake of this effect one must take into the bargain having to heat more airspace.

The wood lining is necessary so that the wood can extract the moisture from the air. At the beginning of the bath the relative humidity mustn't exceed 20% and it must not rise to more than 30% during use. If the humidity exceeds 35% the effect of the sauna is questionable and its use often difficult. The temperature directly under the ceiling should be 212F and on the top step 176F. Higher temperatures are bearable with lower humidity but one should avoid them however, and if occasion rises do without brushes and tassels.

In constructing a sauna one should choose the heating system which is least expensive in that area. It is only important that the heating unit should not radiate directly into the room but rather just send hot air into the sweat chamber. Ovens with higher radiant heat can be walled in like filigree work with chamottes or bricks. If the shower and diving well are to be separate from the washroom, one should do without warm water except for the warm footbath.

The relaxing room, in which sufficient beds are ready, must be cool and dry; if an open air resting area is lacking, at least a cold, thoroughly aired room must be available.

10 Rules for a Sauna Visit

1. Eat a snack about a 1/2 hour before.

2. Visit the toilet once more before.

3. Wash thoroughly with a mild soap before entering the sweat room.

4. Dry thoroughly and take another, towel for sitting and lying on.

5. Be sure your feet are warm. A warmed stone may help when no foot basin with warm water is available.

6. Use no warm water between the sauna rounds. Use warm water sparingly before-hand too.

7. Remain in the sweat room only as long as it is comfortable, on no account more than ten minutes (with very good acclimatization 15 minutes maximum) and don't visit the sweat chamber more than 3 times.

8. After each sauna round inhale the cool air deeply before outwardly cooling off.

9. Have a massage after at least one sauna round. Use at least the tassel; it has a better and deeper effect than the brush. The tassel is a substitute for the bird-trod which was common earlier in bath houses in Germany under the same name. Dr. W. Groh suggests bast as a material which lends itself, due to its durability and suppleness. One can easily make oneself a tassel and take it along to a sauna visit. One makes it about 3 centimeters thick and measured from the handle 25 to 30 cm long.

10. If you take a sunlamp treatment do it beforehand and in a careful dosage.

The Effects of the Sauna

The sauna is a bath which refreshes the autonomous nervous system by purposeful application of cold and hot air, of cold water and little water steam which gives the body strong resistance through the adaption of the circulation system to sharp temperature changes.

On entering the sweat room the body defends itself against the suddenly attacking heat by the increased release of warmth. The evaporation warmth is drawn from the body by strong breaking out in sweat. The moisture, evaporated into the air, is soaked up by the wood paneling so that the humidity remains low and the high temperature can be born by the body without particular difficulty. It is only after several minutes that the body adjusts to the increased external temperature, in that its temperature rises to about 39C. It is important for the success of the sauna that this fever zone be raised during the course of the sauna.

The happenings during the sauna are not difficult to understand. During the stay in the sweat chamber, the skin's blood vessels enlarge and expel the water from the body. During the cooling off the vessels become smaller from the cold, enlarge however again as a reaction and thus create a pleasant feeling of warmth. This "circulation gymnastic" stimulates the central of the autonomous nerve system by which the unconscious proceedings of the body are regulated, and thus leads to an increase of metabolism, glandular and digestive functions, which are able to mutually regulate each other from this shock and to set aside the hyper- and subfunctions of the organ simultaneously.

The respiration is also stimulated by the sauna. Skin and respiratory tract are directly effected by temperature changes and in-crease their functions first. The blood circulates more violently and pulls the waste of the metabolism with it.

Only in this way can the sauna be considered a means to combat obesity. It isn't a drastic treatment whose success can be measured by the weight one has lost during the sauna bath. The body quickly regains the lost fluids. Only with support of a meaningful diet can the metabolism advancement be fully utilized. To this belong most of all restrictions in the use of salt, fat and alcohol, on the other hand, however, a sufficient amount of high value proteins. The evil doers are not the viruses and bacterias but men themselves, who strip the body of its resistance by unnatural living habits. Warmth and cold are natural irritations to whose reaction the body is adjusted.

The days of the old ballet were characterized by gaudy, voluminous costumes, whose constricting foils hampered the freedom of motion, and resulted in unclear and broken movement.

The mind and eye of the period, nurtured on just such fare, accepted it without question. It was traditional. It had existed long before, and they did not question that it would continue to exist for a long time to come.

In 1904, Isadora Duncan startled the world with her innovations in the Dance. She opened a school, and there taught her doctrines of absolute freedom of mind and body. The dance audience of her time reacted in no uncertain manner. She was greeted with an extreme rebuff.

However, after some training, the children of her school performed. As the curtain rose, the police stormed the doors of he auditorium, and attempted to stop the performance on the grounds that the costumes were indecent. They maintained that they displayed, too brazenly, the contours of the children's growing shapely bodies. It was only because of the vigorous intervention of friends and followers, that the police finally withdrew, and permitted the performance to go on.

Had it not been for the aid of these friends, motivated by their firm belief in her sincerity of purpose, and fine aesthetic sense, this very beautiful thought, which she later used in the development of the Dance Art, would have been stifled, and no doubt remained dormant for many years.

Saved from the withering hand of police censorship, Isadora Duncan's idea was transferred to thousands of children, and attracted a wide audience, who came to believe in it as earnestly as she.

Briefly, the idea promulgated was this:

To read the most outstanding and reputable authors: to listen to the music of such composers as Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, Wagner, and Mozart: to gaze upon, and to absorb the works of our very best painters and sculptors: to ramble among the trees and flowers, to hear the birds, breathe the air, and to actually live with Nature. where she is most glorified in the woods, is part of the education of these children.

Thus were the young, growing children introduced to all intellectual beauties of life: and then. when the joy of recreating their emotions in the dance medium faced them, this inspiring background gave impetus to their artistic creations.

Their inner life, subtly influenced by this wide and beautiful background, served as a mine of experience. from which welled up numerous conceptions asking to be concretized in the Dance.

The value of this inward gratification, however, would be absolutely nil, without an unrestricted and unconfined body, which, allows to move freely, gives to the audience and the aspirants of the Dance, the feelings that the dancers have captured during their sojourn in this happy environment.

Isadora Duncan was responsible for the most revolutionary changes the dance world has ever known. It will not be long however, before tremendous strides in the same direction will be taken by other dancers, who feel today. as she felt in her times. that the hampering, and movement-restricting raiment, stand between them in the fullest realization of their dance creations.

Nudist colonies are growing rapidly throughout the world. In Germany, lovers of the sun, and the freely moving body flock to the Nudist colonies. In Sweden, the ranks grow. In America, a stronghold of puritanical and blue law ideals, prejudiced against Nudism. are being destroyed with ever increasing rapidity. As these colonies grow. and the dancers realize that from them, and from the lessons they teach, their dancing will be immeasurably enriched, they will join them, and bring to the Nudist movement a new strength, a new life, and a new vigor.

The writer of this commentary has conducted an experiment which brought about the most interesting results. A trip was made to a Nudist colony. Since one of the aims of the Nudist colonies is to perfect a well-rounded education, dance classes may be seen in session. Approaching from the distance, an arm or leg is seen reaching toward the sky; a back is bent: and still another body is swaying to the tune of the Autumn breeze. It is just a limbering-up exercise. Now comes the regular routine work to teach unity of movement. Hands at shoulder level! Down! Up! Down! Deep knee bending! Down and Up! Swinging hip over to one side! And back! And who of the onlookers would not be inspired by such precision of movement, such grace in its fulfillment?

The group then divided into small groups of five. They worked on improvisations, using for accompaniment, their own humming. After a decision was reached as to definite movements, each group performed. A vote was taken as to the most expressive dance, and then the group which had created the dance, proceeded to teach it to the others.

All of this technique and creative work was done without any impediment whatsoever.

So impressed was the writer with what had been seen, that she was moved to the decision of planning a class in her own dance studio in the city.

Here she taught what she had learned. At about 7:00 P. M., the members of the class began to to slowly stroll in. They went into the dressing room, chatted while getting into their tights, wholly unaware of the revelation I had in store for them.

In the studio. with the group gathered around me. I gave a little talk before starting the class. When they learned what I had seen at the Nudist colony. the expressions on their faces were interesting to note. One of the more impressed pupils made a motion that we dance in the "nude."

"Is it allowed"? another questioned. But who was to stop us since we were indoors? A few still hesitated but since the majority voted for it, they all joined in as good sports. That class was conducted in the "nude."

As soon as the dance was over, they all gathered about me, filled to the brim with their impressions. The majority felt that they had found a new spirit, a new freedom. They decided to find out more about this idea, about which they were only vaguely aware.

An outing was arranged the Nudist Colony in which I conducted a class outdoors for them; and as a conclusion to this experiment many of my pupils have joined the Nudist ranks. We have classes regularly, creating new and more beautiful dances which more than likely would have never been born had we not taken the initiative.

It is also true, however that many of the well-known dancers will encounter in any obstacles strewn in their path. No doubt their courageous efforts combating these barriers will rise above this opposition and I have every reason to believe that they will be successful. As any Art is a reflection of the ideas of the day and very often anticipates those of the future. It is also a modifying instrument on these ideas. The Art of the Dance is advancing the philosophy of Nudism, and cannot fail to influence contemporary thought.

I WAS BORN in 1884, perfectly nude.

I Since then I have found myself frequently reverting to this state. My parents were of conventional, somewhat austere type, and it was a matter of considerable concern to them that their only child should at times depart from the excellent example which they set. More than once was I punished for "indecent exposure." I remember one time when quite a young boy I looked into the great bin of oats in my father's barn and suggested to my playmate how nice those oats would feel against our bare bodies. We at once proceeded to the experiment and that night, after a very unpleasant session with my shocked father, I was sent to our neighbor to apologize for leading her little son astray.

After this incident my boyhood adventures in nudism were mostly confined to my own personal practice alone, but they were not infrequent. I loved the freedom of feeling that came when nothing separated me from the air, sunshine, or water.

In 1905 I was invited to join a family party of people who were planning to camp in the Berkshires. At one time there were sixteen in the group, but during much of the summer I was the only grown man, being then twenty-one. We were all readers of Physical Culture magazine, which in those days frankly advocated the practice of nudity. We had also read John R. Coryell's Child of Love. So we were already inclined to try the virtue of sunbathing.

With some canvas we fenced off a space in the orchard and the girls rook their sun-baths within this enclosure, with the boys on the outside. The one exception to this was in the case of myself and the girl who that summer had consented to become my wife. We took our sunbaths together.

The following summer we were married and spent our honeymoon in Bernarr Mac-Fadden's so-called Physical Culture City in Helmetta, New Jersey. A large tract of land, surrounding a seventy-acre artificial lake, had been laid out in streets and avenues, parks and business blocks, and building lots had been sold to readers of the magazine all over the country. I bought five of these lots. Although the city looked very impressive on paper, it was in a very wild and rough state on the ground. So were the inhabitants of it. There were not many of them, and they lived in crude shacks, but they were the most enthusiastic of Mac-Fadden's followers, and practiced nudity to their heart's content within the confines of what they confidently believed was one day to be a city of several thousand like minded enthusiasts.

Nearer the highway and railroad, on the other side of the little river which ran over the spillway out of Lake Marguerite, were the tents of the summer camp, the gymnasium of the physical culture school, the vegetarian restaurant, the publishing plant, and the playground. Here the people were much more circumspect. The men wore shorts and the women wore bloomers, and only the children wore nothing. But even this was shocking to the public and many buggy-loads of people came from miles away and brought their lunch, for the thrill of being shocked.

From our vacation at Physical Culture City, my bride and I went immediately to a Holiness Camp Ground, where we found enough seclusion to continue our practice of nude bathing and sunbathing. As I look back now, I wonder whether we should have been put in the stocks or burned at the stake if the elders had found us out.

We did not find the opportunity for extending our practice beyond our own family circle until 1910, when we started a summer camp for girls on a delightful lake in Maine. We did not introduce nudism there; the custom of discarding clothes arose perfectly spontaneously with the girls themselves ; but we did not discourage them and that, I suppose, made us responsible. About this time a man and his wife from Birmingham, England, came to this country to start a nudist camp, and I spent three days at Ellis Island straightening out their difficulties so that they could get in. An entire nudist family from Bermuda spent the summer with us in 1914 and we returned their visit in 1915. An enthusiastic nudist from Phoenix, Arizona, came all the way to Boston for the purpose of visiting us, though we had known him only through the medium of the little paper of which I was the editor. In course of time the fact that we dispensed with clothes part of the time in our Maine camp was found out, and a woman agent for the Maine Society for the Suppression of Vice had me hailed to Portland and was with difficulty constrained from breaking up my camp and taking my guests into the custody of the society for the protection of minor female children ! With the aid of a lawyer we reached a compromise. I must leave the camp, but my wife might carry it on, with the promise that there would be no more "scandalous conduct." Incidentally, a rumor of my difficulties was carried by some busy-body to the president of the college where I had been an instructor for eleven years, with the result that I was asked to resign.

Denied the privilege of living in my own camp, I went to Missouri and started a new one. This time it was frankly a nudist camp. At first there was but one other man and myself; later two women joined us, and later still a few others. We were twenty-five miles from the nearest railroad. in an oak forest on the Gasconnade River. In this seclusion we conducted on a small scale exactly the same sort of camp that the modern nudist movement thinks of as being new to this country, although ours was held in 1917, seventeen years ago.

Two years later, one of these women helped me in establishing a similar camp in the lake region of New Hampshire. At this time our small magazine already referred to, was advocating nudism among other things, and we organized its readers into a society called the Common Sense Club. Through this magazine we inspired the starting of five "common sense" camps in various parts of the country.

At our Common Sense Camp No. 1 we had a small lake all to ourselves, and the member who owned the land had built a cottage for us right on its shore. Although we had "staterooms" with double decker built-in bunks, we all preferred to sleep on the large screened porch.

The camp started with four men, three women, and two children, but as the summer advanced, a number of others joined us, some for week-ends or a fortnight. and some to stay for the rest of the season. Our expenses were very low, but we strove to keep the company congenial by inviting only those with whom we were already acquainted or had had considerable correspondence.

Since my associate was a woman with much knowledge of, and more enthusiasm for, the unfired, i.e., uncooked, food diet, and since we had tried it out with considerable success in our Missouri camp, we adopted it here. Some of our guests were rather skeptical at first, but soon found themselves well satisfied with meals which had not been cooked, and there were frequent requests for recipes. Our raw biscuits, or as one man dubbed them "riscuits," were particularly subjects of good natured bantering, but all agreed that they made very tasty substitutes for baked bread.

I do not know whether other Common-sense Camps were nudist, but we had a genuine nudist camp in New Hampshire. Our neighbors knew of our practice and wondered at it, but remained on no less friendly terms with us. They seemed to assume that what we did on our own land was our own business, and since we appeared to be fairly respectable otherwise, and they profited by our trade, they were content to live their lives and let us live ours.

By the next season the nationwide membership of the Common Sense Club had grown to about a thousand. Every state in the union was represented and several foreign countries. We published two editions of a directory, whereby members might find other members in their vicinity or correspond with others at a distance. Nudism was not our only common interest, but we endeavored to list those of similar views in religion, politics, diet, and other matters.

My correspondence increased until I was sometimes writing as many as two hundred letters a day. I felt that I was spending too much time and energy on what was only a hobby with me, carried on in addition to my regular vocation. I had to do some-thing about it, and I did. In 1920, I arranged with a young man in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to take over the magazine, the club, and the correspondence. I wrote my last editorial in the form of a swan-song, and departed, leaving no forwarding address except that of my substitute and successor. Unfortunately, my successor died shortly after he assumed this responsibility, and the whole movement which I had started, died with him.

In my wanderings in Western Canada I had heard many extraordinary tales of a sect of Russian peasants who have been sponsoring periodic nude pilgrimages. There are, I was told, not any more than about two hundred members in the sect, mostly elderly folk. Originally they were Doukhobors, and though the outside world still thinks of them as such, they now form a society all their own. They call themselves Svobodniki, Freedomites.

Upon investigation I learned that nudity, though the most sensational, is by no means the most significant aspect of their stem denial of civilization. God, they argue, does not grow cooked foods; and so man should not eat anything that has touched fire. And they don't; they subsist exclusively upon raw foods. Why cut hair and shave, they ask? If God did not want flowing locks on man's head and a beard on his face, he wouldn't grow them. They will not eat salt, sugar, pepper, vinegar or other spices and condiments. God, they maintain, created all living things to work out their own destiny in their own way. Therefore man has no right to subject any of them to his use. And they don't.

Not only will they kill no living thing; they will eat no eggs or milk products nor wear anything made of hides. Several years ago they turned all their stock out upon the prairies, to free "God's dumb creatures" from the slavery of man. They will not even work a horse.

Instead of plowing, they will spade up their land, and do all their other work by hand. God, they declare, wants man to work and live in the open, in field and forest, like bird and beast. Therefore man should abandon the city and the factory and the machine. And they have. They will not live in the city or work in a factory or use any machinery.

One of the things they can not forgive the Doukhobors for is their practice of sending a certain portion of their men to work in the city during the winter months. Once they heard of a strike of miners. To show their sympathy for the strikers and to protest against the employment of human beings in mines and factories, they called a mass-meeting, delivered speeches, sang hymns, and concluded the celebration by burning an old reaper one of them possessed. At an-other time a group of them assembled in a newly built village in Saskatchewan, stripped themselves bare, built a bonfire of their clothes, and amidst the chanting of Psalms flung their money into the flames, one hundred and sixty dollars, all they had between them, as an example to the world of what to do with the root of all evil. On another occasion they resolved to protest against the Doukhobors for their increasing worldliness and their continuous and blasphemous corn-promises with civilization, as evidenced in their adoption of modern machinery, modern business methods, and, treachery of treacheries, their erection of a separate office building.

They decided to burn this building in the hope that the act would waken their erring brethren into a realization of their perverse ways and bring them back to the fold of Christ. On a certain evening they gathered to carry out their resolve. Yet before setting fire to the structure they had condemned, they pried open the windows, climbed in-side, and with lighted candles in their hands marched from room to room and floor to floor, searching for birds, lest any might perish in the flames.

I had been told that in Thrums, British Columbia, I should find some of their most influential leaders, and so I went there to pay them a visit. Thrums sprawls over a jagged valley that serves as a connecting floor between two walls of mountains. It is like a slice of Russia grafted upon Canadian soil. Russian speech floats in the air; Russian folk-tunes, with their long-drawn-out plaintiveness, re-sound over the mountain-sides; Russian women and girls, working in gardens and orchards, barefooted, and with bright kerchiefs over their heads, dot the landscape. Nearly all the settlers are Russian, laborers in the near-by sawmills or independent farmers possessing small parcels of land, which they cultivate with zeal and upon which they raise unexcelled fruit and vegetables. From a group of rugged boys who had gathered at the station to meet the train I learned the location of the various Svobodniki farms. I went to one that was screened off from the road by a thick orchard. It nestled in the very shadow of a wooded mountain. It was a small place of not over ten acres, spread over a gently sloping billside, on top of which slouched two small old and outwardly neglected houses, built near and at right angles to each other. At one time this place was the seat of the Svobodnik society. It still serves as a rendezvous for its scattered members when they come together. At present it is the abode of two childless couples, elderly people.

I went to one of the houses. The door was wide open, and, following peasant custom, I walked in without knocking. What a delightfully typical peasant home it was! The walls were freshly whitewashed, the girders unplaned and unpainted, and long planks were fastened to the walls, for chairs and lounges, and the eternal platform, stretching from one end of the room to the other, took the place of a bed, just like the homes of our peasants in the old village, except that no icons adorned the walls, and no pigs and chickens strutted about the floor.

At an open window, with her back toward me, bent over a piece of sewing, sat a middle-aged woman, barefooted and bareheaded, with her thin gray hair slicked back straight and done into a braid, with a white ribbon at the end, not at all in the manner of a person renouncing man-made aids of adornment. She did not hear me enter, and when I spoke to her, she turned round and eyed me with suspicion. Without waiting to be questioned, I explained to her who I was and what I had come for, and instantly she grew animated, leaped from her chair, and, excitedly muttering words of warm welcome, began to bustle about to entertain me.

"Nu, and I thought you were an Anghlick," she apologized, "come from the Government with a complaint. Ah, a Russian from New York! Nu, synok (little son), I'll set the table at once. How hungry you must be after such a long journey! And we have lots of food -- lots." And suiting action to word, despite my vigorous protests that I had just partaken of a hearty meal, she rushed dish after dish upon the table. And what fare! Heads of lettuce, raw carrots, freshly pulled onions, raw peanuts, peaches, raisins, plums, and new potatoes.

"Sit down, synok; sit dawn," she said, and fairly shoved me into a seat at the head of the table. "Eat, eat, synok; don't say you are not hungry after such a long and arduous journey. You must be hungry; of course you must be, and our food is not like yours. It is unspoiled by cooking; it is just as God grows it, and as all of God's creatures save men eat it." Dish after dish rattled its way toward me.

"Maybe you'd like some of our bread? Ah, I've forgotten!" Off she dashed, soon returning not with a loaf, but with a glass jar filled with something that looked like corn meal sprinkled with pepper. She shoved a bowl toward me and poured some of the substance into it. "That's our bread," she chattered on. "We make it ourselves, synok, from wheat, raw peanuts, raisins, sun-dried apples and plums, which we mix and grind. Delicious bread! Nu, just try it. Slice peaches and plums into it, as we do,and mix it. Wonderful feed that is, synok! We eat barrels of it in winter. It's so strengthening!"

I plied her with questions, which she answered only too eagerly. Of course it took courage to be a Svobodnik in the face of the opposition of the whole world. It was hard at first to live on mw foods. It made them sick, and every time the smell of shctchui (soup) reached their nostrils, they were over-come with a painful desire to taste cooked foods. That was because their systems had been poisoned by their previous mode of living and craved unnatural things. But now, they won't look at cooked dishes. One of their women fell sick once. An Anghlick told her that if she ate hot soup she would get well. She followed the Anghlick's advice, and of course they had to discharge her from the society. It is a great joy to be a Svobodnik, to live in tune with God and nature; only Canada is such a worldly country, even in the mountains, offers so many temptations that seduce the young people. If they could only get back to Russia! Did I know Lenin? Couldn't I intercede for them and beg the new ruler of Russia to let them in and give them small parcels of land, enough only for fruits and vegetables for themselves? Did the Bolshevics actually kill off people in Russia? It could not be that they were killing peasants? It must be landlords and the czar's relatives they were putting to death. Why should any one want to kill muzhiks? Muzhiks have nothing, anyway. Ah, if they could only get back to the land of their birth!

Soon the man of the house entered. Ivan was his name. He was a leader of the sect, and what an arresting pereonalityl Tall, gaunt, erect, with a massive head and heavy dark hair that straggled in waves over his sun-baked neck and ears. His broad, bony face seemed sunk in a lustrous black beard, which, together with his hard, gleaming eyes, overhung by heavy brows, lent him an air of medieval austerity that awed and yet fascinated. Greeting me cordially he sat down beside me and, peasant fashion, pelted me, in between bites of onions, carrot, and radishes, with personal questions. At last he said:

"Nu, we are happy to entertain you. We are always glad to have strangers visit us, and quite a good many come, especially Anghlicks. You see, out in the world people think that we always go naked, that that is all we believe in. And do you know, brother, people come to look at us. Yes, and when they find us in our clothes, they are disappointed. Sometimes they will ask us if we won't disrobe, go out in the sun, and pose for them, so they can take pictures. Why do you suppose they do it? Do they want to sell these pictures and make money! Akh, what people will do for money! But we are simple-minded people, and we don't mind what others my or think of us. Christ says love thine enemy as thyself, and we believe in Christ. Our homes, our cellars, our orchards, our gardens, our hearts, are open to all. That's the way Christ wants us to be."

"You see, synok, " the woman inter-posed, "we are not like the people in your world. Your people teach even children to be selfish and cruel. In your world, if a baby lolls around on the floor, and some living thing crawls near it, what do you do? You say to the baby, 'Kill it! kill it!' And some-times you set the example yourselves,and step upon the innocent thing and crush it. Yes? And do you know what we do? We say to our baby, 'Vwval naval Don't touch! don't touch! It hurts, it hurts.' "

"But some creatures," I protested, "have to be destroyed."

"What ones?" Ivan flared back. "Why," I replied, "flies and snakes and gophers. Think what--"

But Ivan would not let me continue.

"Look, brother," he said pointing with his eyes at the ceiling, the walls, the floor. "Do you see any flies in this house? Hardly any, yes? And it 's the end of summer, too, with autumn smelling in the air, when flies rush inside of houses for shelter. And do you know why we have no flies? Because we live a natural life. We don't do any cooking and don't use any sugar and other vile foods that attract them. And snakes? Nu ladno (very well)." He rose, took a few steps away from the table, and continued, acting out his words in the manner of a man taking the part of the grave-digger in "Hamlet."

"Here am I, a man. Do, a man. I am walking along a road -- a road. And here at this place I see a snake. And I, the man, step upon the snake with my heel and crush it, and right here before me lies the snake, dead -- dead! And now tell me who is the snake, the thing that's dead, or I, the man?"

"So, so," said his wife, and nodded with evident delight.

"And now you say kill gophers; they ruin crops. Ekh, brother, if every man would work as we do, there would be enough for gophers and for birds, more than enough. But do you know what it means to kill a gopher? I'll tell you what it means. You kill a gopher, you kill a mouse; you kill a mouse, you kill a rabbit; you kill a rabbit, you kill a squirrel; you kill a squirrel, you kill a cow; you kill a cow, you kill a horse; you kill a home, you kill a man!"

We went out into the orchard and sat down on the ground, in the sun. Other Svobodniki joined us, long-bearded men and barefooted women, eager to talk themselves out.

"To the outside world we are a crazy people," Ivan explained; "yes, crazy. We don't work horses, we don't use machines, we don't eat cooked foods, we don't kill snakes. Perhaps we are crazy. Who knows? We are not educated. We don't want to be. Why should we? Is God educated? You see, we believe in God, and do you know what belief in God means? Do you think it means going to church and dropping on your knees and crossing yourself incessantly and praying and sobbing yourself hoarse with repentance? What foolishness! We have no prayers; we don't pray. Once a Russian came to visit us. He was a poor man, and we offered him shelter. He stayed with us about half a year. He was Orthodox, and, ah, how pious! He'd rise in the middle of the night, get down on his knees in the dark, and pray, pray, pray, sobbing his heart out to God, and keeping us awake for hours. But we said nothing. We are Svobodnild; we believe in every one doing as he pleases. And one morning he was gone. He had disappeared in the night. And then we discovered that the hundred dollars we had saved up had also disappeared. Nu, what good is prayer to such a man?"

He paused, brushed back the hair the wind had blown over his face, and continued:

"God, brother, means love, and do you know what love means? Love means freedom, absolute, everlasting freedom, to let every one do not as books and priests and man-made laws prescribe, but as his own inner spirit dictates. That's freedom. And, nu, how much freedom have you in your world? You have nations, governments, schools, property, and machines, the wickedest of all things, and all these kill freedom; and when you kill freedom, you kill love; and when you kill love, you kill God. Smile, if you please; it's so, though. You am educated, yes? You live in a big city, New York. Is it as big as Chicago? I was in Chicago once, but I 've never been in New York. And where you live, you've got to dress and eat and talk and pray just as other people tell you. Nu, bow much freedom have you in New York? And then in New York you are all grasping after the cent; and when you get it, you clutch at it with all your might, as though the cent was all there is to life. No, brother, you have no freedom; you are all slaves in the outside world, slaves of the machine and of the cent. But we have freedom. We'd rather have freedom than food. Listen!

"It was about eleven years ago. A crowd of us marched into the village of Verigin, Saskatchewan. It was day-time, and we removed our clothes and threw them into a heap and set them afire, and then we took up all the money we had between us and flung that into the flames. You see, we had rid ourselves of our money, our clothes, of every bit of property we had; we had nothing left. We were as poor as on the day we came into the world; none could be poorer than we. And yet we were free. We felt so happy that we sang. When you have freedom, brother, you need no clothes, no money, nothing, to make you happy."

"So, so, so," said the other Svobodniki, nodding in elation.

Since he touched on the question of clothes, I made bold to ask for an explanation of the nude pilgrimages.

"It is simple enough, brother," Ivan began. "Now look! This is my shirt, made of linen, which we ourselves have woven; and these are my trousers, likewise made of linen. We make these clothes ourselves, from spinning to sewing. And under these clothes is my body, and that's the work of God. Now the clothes are our own work, the work of man, and of them I am not ashamed; but the body is the work of God, and of that I am ashamed. Nu, is there reason in that? What is there about the body that man should be ashamed of? If God is not ashamed of it, if it is the very image of God, why should man be? Did Adam have clothes? Do beasts wear clothes? Do birds wear clothes? Supposing you threw a cloak over the back of a goat, how would it look? It 's the same with man, brother. Only man's mind is poisoned; yes, poisoned by the things that rob him of freedom, and that's why he thinks that the body is a terrible thing and should be covered up. But we Svobodniki say, freedom, freedom of the body from the poison that gets in there from foods that are boiled and broiled and roasted, and freedom of the mind from false and poisonous ideas, from slavery and from the things that cruel, selfish people have invented who did not know what freedom meant"

As I was listening to these speeches I could not help thinking of Tolstoy. How that sublime barbarian would glow with joy at such fiery denunciation of Western civilization! In essence the Svobodnik view of life is boldly Tolstoyan. I am not so sure but the ironic Christian nihilist would even approve of the nude pilgrimages.

"I suppose you are followers of Tolstoy," I said. To my amazement, the name did not seem to register animation.

"Tolstoy," one of them repeated, "was not he a general in the czar's army?"

"No, he was a writer, one of the greatest that has ever lived."

"A writer?" Ivan repeated in a tone of indifference. "Then he was not of much account"

One evening we gathered in the home of a young Svobodnik. Ilya was his name, a blond, blue-eyed, wiry, handsome, boyish-looking youth, with a shrill musical voice such as good tenors have. He was married to Lusha, or, rather, lived with her, for Svobodniki do not recognize marriage. Like Tolstoy, they regard celibacy as the ideal life; but when a man and woman do decide to live together, they are "brother and sister." Lusha "a one of the prettiest Russian girls I had seen in western Canada, slender, bob-haired, with deep-blue eyes, dark brows, full red lips, and a fine set of teeth. She was the daughter of a Doukhobor and no Svobodnik. In the morning, while Ilya would get his breakfast in the garden and orchard, she would bake potato pancakes for herself and fry potatoes and make tea.

When I came to the house she was busy amidst baskets of tomatoes and peaches, which she was canning for winter use. When Ilya introduced her to me as "my sister," she indignantly protested, insisting she was his wife.

"I believe in absolute freedom," be explained, "and when a man has a wife, he has a possession, and there are no possessions in the kingdom of heaven. If Lusha ever falls in love with any one else..."

"But I won't," Lusha interrupted, almost with a scream.

"I only wanted to say that if you should..."

"I won't, though," she persisted. "You know I only love you."

Being a man, he yielded, and did not refer to the subject again. Lusha served supper. At one end of the table sat the Svobodniki, and before them she set down plates of cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, watermelons, onions; at the other end were a Doukhobor friend, she, and I, and before us she placed hot soup, cakes, bread, and jam. It was one of the most memorable meals I 've ever had. In the pale light of the lamp, in that white-washed but in the Canadian Rockies, the long-haired Svobodniki, in their wbite-linen garments, crunching away with zest at raw fruits and vegetables, seemed a pathetic and unearthly sight. Ivan asked Lusha if she had any oat-meal in the house. She went to the cellar, soon returning with a big box of oatmeal, which she handed to Ivan. Be poured some into a bowl, sprinkled raisins over it, poured in water, stirred it, and began to eat it, praising highly its gustatory and nutritive qualities. He ate it with so much relish that I rad not the heart to inform him that he commercial oatmeal in question is far from being an uncooked food.

There was an old Svobodnik woman at the table. She was over eighty, bent and toothless, and with a face that seemed like a lump of withered flesh without bones. She was one of the most talkative persons there, and in the course of the evening she narrated an experience she had which illuminates the Svobodnik attitude toward suffering.

"A group of us," she began, "had gone to a certain village on a pilgrimage. We stopped at the railroad station and began to sing. A crowd had gathered, and one of our men who could talka little of the Aughlicklanguage explained to the people there what it meant to be a Svobodnik. He told them that we believed in absolute freedom, and that even the clothes we wore were a sign of slavery. Then in protest against the slavery in the world we disrobed. We were arrested, and sent to an insane asylum. There they took us into a ward and told us we must go to work; but we refused. Then two persons threw me to the floor. Of course I did not resist. We Svobodniki believe if people want to beat us or cut us up, let them do it. Our spirit will make us insensible to the pain. Then these two persons jammed a brush into my hand and shouted, 'Now will you work!" And I shook my head, and said: 'No. Let me out of here. I have done no one harm: Then they grabbed my hands and beat them against the floor until I lost all sense of feeling, and after that they stood me up against the wall, seized my arms, twisted them back, forced my mouth open with an iron thing, which they rolled around inside until they wrenched two of my teeth out and tore off a strip of flesh inside of my right cheek, and the blood gushed forth and soaked my clothes. Then they flung me to the floor, dragged me around, kicked me into a corner, and left me there. And when I came to I clambered to my feet and stepped over to the window. I looked outside at the sky and the sun, and of a sudden I felt Christ in my heart, and light came to my soul, and I felt free and happy and began to sing."

That night I lay awake for a long time, meditating. How childish these Svobodniki seemed! How futile their outlook upon life, and their impossible anarchic conceptions of freedom! To an Anglo-Saxon, with his orderly ways, his utilitarian aspirations, his search for a comfortable berth in the world, the efforts of these unread, unlettered muzhiks to attain a certain peculiar standard of spiritual perfection must appear absurd and irrational. But, then, judged by Anglo-Saxon standards, Raskolnikov, Prince Mishkin, Ivan Lammazov, or his brother Alyosha, the saint, persons of normal mind? And what of Tolstoy himself, renouncing in his old age fame and fortune and fleeing in the dark of night from a comfortable home and a loving family to a distant wilderness in the hope of finding peace of soul?

As I lay there meditating, I was euddenly interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Are you asleep?" It was Ivan, the leader of the sect, standing at the door-way of my room.

"No," I replied. "Come in."

I lighted the lamp, and he sat down an a box beside my bed.

"Don't think unkindly of me for coming again," he said apologetically."I don't mean to disturb you, but there was something else about the Svobodniki that may interest you and the paper for which you re going to write about us, and as you expect to leave in the morning, I thought I 'd come back and tell you about it. You see, we don't bury our dead."

I could hardly believe his words. "No, we don't; we just throw them out on the grass."

"But--"

"I know what you are going to say, but this is the way we think. When a man is dead, his soul is gone, and his flesh is of no use for anything except for a feast for the wild beasts. People think that's terrible. They think the body is something sacred. But it is not. Leave it somewhere, and it rots and becomes filthy. Of course the dead person's relatives cry and mourn, and they want to dress him up and put him into a casket with flowers and other ornaments, but it rots, anyway. When a man dies, his friends and relatives should rejoice and sing, for he has gone into the kingdom of eternal bliss. That 's the way we think."

"But don't they arrest you for doing that?"

He only shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll tell you what happened to us once several years ago. We went on a long pilgrimage, and we came to Fort William. One of our party died. It was winter. We got a sled, put the corpse in there naked, and covered it with a black cloth. We wanted to take it to the cemetery of the Anghlicks and throw it out there on the ground. But we didn't know where the cemetery was, and so, as we passed through the town, we stopped and asked. A policeman became suspicious, and he came over and asked us what we had on the sled.

"'A corpse,' we told him.

"'Where are you going with it?' "'To the cemetery.'

"'Have you got a grave dug?' "

"'He does not need a grave.'"

"'How are you going to bury him?'"

"'We won't. We'll just throw him on the ground.'"

"'Have you a coffin?'"

"'Of what use,' said we, 'is a coffin to him? He'll feel just as comfortable without one.'"

"'Have you a permit?'"

"'A permit?' said we. 'He 's already got his permit from Jesus Christ'"

"'Well,' he said, 'you can't go.'"

"Of course we wouldn't fight with him, and when we realized he wouldn't let us go to the cemetery, we lifted the corpse off the sled, threw it at the policeman's feet, marched around several times singing, 'Farewell, comrade,' and departed."

He rose to go.

"Nu, I won't disturb you any longer, brother," he said on leaving. "I only hope that you will not remember us in evil. We are simple people. We have not as nice ways and as nice things as educated people. We don't want them. But we have given you the best we had, and if you come again, whether you write well of us or not, we shall welcome you just the same. And if you tell your friends about us, and they say to you that we are crazy, just tell them that perhaps we are, but that we are honest folk and that we earn our living with our hands and that our great joy is to fulfil the will of Christ."

THE great Dr. Johnson was once regarding a nude study in an art gallery when a passer-by stopped and, nodding to the picture, said, "Don't you agree that it is indecent ?" "It is not," retorted the doctor, "but your observation is."

A like mentality lies behind the Godiva legend. In an all-healthy minded community there would not be—there could not be—a Godiva legend. For there would be nothing shameful in the sight of a nude woman, and, consequently, there could be no Peeping Toms, Dicks or Harrys.

Now we have a British film based on the legend. It is "Lady Godiva Rides Again." It is not a serious study of Godiva and her story, just a pleasant romp, but the central figure is a beauty-contest winner who appears in a local pageant as Godiva.

"Oh, the shame of it!" wails her father on hearing the news. "Nothing like this has ever happened to us before !" If he had bothered to watch his daughter he would have seen no more of her figure than the tip of her nose and her ten toes, for she was so swathed by a long mane that she appeared to be hiding in a bundle of hay. No matter. Such is the inherited convention about the display of the naked body that the mere thought of a nude presumably sets up gooseflesh. No need to be seen to be naked ; to be known to be naked is enough. Which, of course, is the final absurdity.

The first Lady Godiva was wife of Leofric, Earl of Marcia, and it was about 1040 A.D. that she made her famous—or notorious—ride. She had begged her husband not to proceed with his plan to levy extortionate taxes on the townspeople. Leofric agreed, on condition that she rode unclothed through the crowded streets of Coventry. So much is fact. Why he made this request of his wife is not known. Perhaps as a jest. Maybe she had said, womanlike, she would " do anything " to help the people and he took her at her word.

But the ride itself appears to have been little more than a legend. If it did take place, little was heard of it beyond the borders of Coventry. For in those days there were no means of communication, except on foot. Not until the thirteenth century was there a written account of "the ride."

This appears in Flores Historiarum, by Roger of Wendover. But there seems to be no doubt of Lady Godiva's piety and goodness. Before her death in 1057 she was benefactress to several monasteries, including Coventry and Spalding.

Between the 13th and 17th centuries the ride was enacted several times a decade. In its modern guise the Lady Godiva ride has become a stunt for a generation nurtured on sex and sensation. But in bygone days parades of naked men or women were often used to protest against civil or social injustice. A notable instance is St. Francis of Assisi who, being rebuked by his bishop, snatched off his clothes in protest and walked through the streets naked.

Dudley, in Worcestershire, staged a Godiva procession in 1929 with 100 Tableaux. The girl playing Godiva received abusive and threatening letters, but the biggest protest came against the excuse for the ride, that Dudley Castle had been owned by Leofric and built by Godiva's ancestor, Dodo, in 700 A.D. Declared a prominent church worker, "It is positively indecent to seize so flimsy an excuse to parade a practically nude woman through the streets of Dudley. Coventry had the excuse of a legend. The best we can do is to produce Dodo fiction."

Porthcawl's 1935 Godiva Ride brought strong protests. Two members of the Council resigned. The Church said that the idea was " the Spirit of the Devil," so the Council decided to choose a Godiva from outside the town. This in turn brought protests from the local girls. The pageant was a failure--netting only £60 from the crowd of 60,000.

Even men have been " Godivas," as in Brighton in 1935, when the chosen girl was forced to withdraw. In the same year, at Farnborough, the proposal to have a Godiva Ride to raise £4,000 for the local hospital roused many protests. In the end, an almost-naked man rode as Godiva. In the same year £2,434 was collected from crowds watching a Coventry bus-driver as Godiva. But takings dropped £1,000 the following year and films were blamed for the loss. " The public see so many undressed ladies on the screen that the pageant no longer has the same effect."

What effect? It isn't what you see but what you think you see! What a comment on the modern mentality!

The shame of Godiva was never that of the woman, but of the onlookers.

HAVE you a sun-trap in your back garden? Is the space at the rear of your house an invitation to outdoor living? If not, it could be made to be very easily.

No one will question the value of relaxation, but few of us do sufficient of it. If there should be an inviting spot, handily located, we would probably take advantage of it for the occasional odd moments of rest, but failing that we just keep on going. Every home should have a spot that invites relaxation. Look over your property and discover its possibilities.

If you lack privacy, do something about acquiring it. The practicing nudist will want a screening that is impossible to see through, around or over. Even if this absolute degree of privacy is not required, it is still much more pleasant to relax if you are not an exhibit for the curious folks who happen to be passing by. There are several different means of gaining varying degrees of privacy. There is always the hedge, of course, but this takes some time to grow to the required height. The Chinese Elm leafs out early in the spring and retains its leaves until late in the fall, and they have such a dense mass of twigs, branches and limbs that even when the leaves drop off they still make a very effective windbreak. They are extremely hardy and may be clipped to any height or shape desired. They grow eighteen inches to two feet annually and reach a maximum height of fifteen feet. The Clipped American Arborvitae (Thuya occidentalis) is the most popular evergreen shrub grown in this country. It is very hardy and may be trimmed to any desired height. The Ligstrum (Amur River Privet) is pre-eminent as a hedge. It grows to a maximum height of 8 feet but can be kept clipped at any height desired. A fuller and more compact hedge can be made by planting two rows zigzag with the plants at the apex of a nine-inch triangle. Its glossy, green foliage holds its color for a good part of the year, and it is fast growing. Lonicera (Pink Tartarian Honeysuckle) is a hardy, fast growing shrub which will reach a height of ten feet and is often used in hedges. The Caragana arborescens will reach a maximum height of fifteen to twenty feet. It is very hardy and requires little attention. There are many other shrubs useful for hedges — many of them slower growing and less hardy, but the above mentioned are the most popular ones.

Very often a combination of both fence and hedge is used, though this is hardly necessary. If a fence is used by itself, some effort should be made to have it, if not decorative, at least not an eye-sore. Corrugated aluminum, either painted or natural makes a good material for a garden wall. It is lightweight, easily erected, and easy to bend around curves. It is easy to erect wooden walls. Set treated posts in concrete, then nail on shiplap and strips. Split cedar and pine pickets make good walls. Cedar saplings are most generally used in making wattle fences where a rustic appearance is desired. The poles are cut straight across the bottom and are either pointed or cut at a slant on the upper end. The usual height is four to six feet, and the fence may be of uniform height or it may be left uneven. The poles are nailed, with no intervening space, to horizontal two-by-fours (or heavier poles) fastened to the fence posts. One nail at the top, and one at the bottom will be sufficient. If every other pole is placed with the butt end up, the posts will fit closely together. Or you may make a fence from 1 1/2 to 3 inch saplings split with a bench or band saw and nailed to supporting strips.

A doorstep terrace, or a terrace in a shaded, airy spot of your garden beside the house, will mean that you can spend more time out-of-doors free from wet grass and muddy shoes. The terrace will dry off much more quickly after a rain than the sod will, and you can use it much earlier in the spring. It is easy to keep clean, and makes a fine replacement for grass over a part of your garden. The terrace can be made with brick, gravel, concrete or wood. If you have a spot where grass will not grow — perhaps under a shady tree – a terrace will solve your problem. But do have a portion of it where the sun strikes, where you may take your sun bath.

You will probably have a shady spot in your garden. If not, plant a fast growing shade tree so that you may enjoy the sultry days of summer beneath its refreshing shade. Have some sort of plants or shrubs for beauty and interest. The extent of these may be influenced by the time and money which you wish to expend on them, but a little work spent on a garden will repay you in health and satisfaction. Some gay, comfortable garden furniture will add the final note of appeal. This need not be elaborate or expensive, but it should be comfortable and serviceable.

Have a table in your garden, so you may eat out-of-doors whenever you desire to do so. A sturdy table and benches or seats, either painted.or oiled, will be a great convenience. And you will really have fun if you can cook out-of-doors too. A portable grill will be a wonderful help when you get in a picnic mood.

There are so many little things that will help you pack more pleasure into your outdoor living. You will have fun thinking them up and working on them, and your out-of-door living will not only bring added pleasure into your life but it will bring added health and contentment. Begin now to make your out-of-door space a summer-time living room where the whole family will love to play and to relax.

Get back to nature and let her work her wonders on your mind and body. The opportunity to absorb both health and beauty is at your doorstep. Step out into the fresh air and sunshine, follow the naturists way of life and your life will be richer, fuller and better.

It is lucky I've always been in my dear aunt's good books. That's why I could talk quite simply and reasonably without being strunck down by the lightning of her reproachful look because I dared to speak up in the defense of these "shameless people", and even to write for and about them. In short, Aunt Polly allowed her-self to be pressed into accepting a seat and listened for at start. It was only then that I realised how hard it is to acquaint some-one with the nature of nudism, to explain the purposes of this movement to him if he regards the whole thing with inward repugnance.

Hesitantly, I reached for a stack of photos. I held one of them out towards Aunt Polly. She raised her hands as if to ward something off.

"Goodness gracious me, I'm certainly not going to take an extra look at those naked fellows and those women. I got enough of a shock when I accidentally looked at your desk..."

"But Auntie, I'm sure it won't hurt to take another look. By the way, I swear I'm not holding a picture of naked sun worshippers under your nose..."

A little sceptical still, Aunt Polly condescended to look at the picture I had picked out. It was quite an "ordinary" beach scene at a beach for people with bathing suits.

"Well now, that's what I like., my aunt praised her good nephew. .That certainly looks much nicer. At least these people are wearing something."

Here I must interrupt to say that my aunt doesn't hold old fashioned views by any means. As far as she's concerned, she is even a modern woman who moves with the times. She goes in for a bit of winter sports and is among the fervent bathers on the beach in summer. Well, together we looked at the beach scene and the people who were "at least" wearing something. Since the picture showed a larger group, I really had no ironical intentions when I pressed a magnifying glass into Aunt Polly's hand. For, in the case of most of the ladies, it was only by the aid of the glass that you could ascertain if and that they were really wearing "something".

Such an experience as this - and I am sure there are enough friends of sunlight who could tell of something like this - makes one begin to wonder involuntarily what shame and modesty really are. They are acquired ideas which are extremely flexible, say some people. They are a brake inherent in man and intended by God or Nature to keep him on the one true path of morality, claim others. For the convinced nudist there is no middle course in a case like this, no matter how gladly he would welcome one in his willingness to get along with people. What people call "being ashamed" is properly speaking the most atrocious kind of hypocrisy imaginable if we examine it more closely.

Why are not children ashamed? If modesty were really a .natural. tendency and not an acquired prejudice, then children above everyone else should be especially modest.. Yet they aren't. However, they become "modest" only under the influence of adults who teach them by force, threats and punishments down to what part of his body a person is "decent" and where he starts getting "indecent". How often a poor little thing has to listen to "oh, shame on you!" until it really begins to feel shame. It is then that the great lie of life to which we human beings have condemned ourselves mostly begins.

A short glance at history will show that the kind of shame we get dinned into us today is not intended by nature, nor does is arise out of some natural necessity. No single concept has undergone so fundamental and thorough a change so often in the course of relatively short periods of time. Clothes that were rejected with a shocked cry of disgust during one century were already considered wearable in the next. Or what had been considered wearable in one era seemed highly immoral in the next.

In spite of many a modification in this or that direction, concepts of modesty in our times were obviously most strongly influenced by the values of the late Middle Ages when the intensified vitality of a flourishing epoch was overshadowed by dark mysticism and finally overwhelmed by it.

The obscurantists of that period, great thinkers though they may have been, will, in our eyes, always have the ineradicable stigma of having humiliated the body as never before. The medieval authorities assigned so excessive a value to all things spiritual that they saw the human body as a mere prisonhouse within which the soul was kept in bondage waiting to be freed to soar to a better world. In that time, or as its outcome, songs about an earthly vale of tears. were composed and whole books of regulations were written on all the possible kinds of castigations to mortify the flesh. Some of these fill the modern reader with horror. There was nothing low and sordid enough that was not done to the human body to show one's scorn for it wherever possible. Everything was possible, even to the verge of suicide, if it would only gain the higher glory and salvation of the soul.

From that era, dark shadows reach into our bright present. Their windows had to be as small as possible, so as to admit no light. Where glass was already in use, it was placed in the windows in darkly tinted colors. It was a sin and disgrace to look at one's body at all or to represent it pictorially, unless one did this arouse or evince disgust and repugnance.

In old books we find such terms as "the cesspool of the body" or "the foul sink of corruption". Such descriptions, which were probably to be taken quite literally, are, of course, no surprise if we realise that, because of the conscious neglect of the body, washing or - Heaven forbid - a bath was prohibited by the strictest taboos.

"He's had a bath, the swine" is an expression of disgust at the sight of one such vile creature, and this is not even very old as literary history goes. It is only obvious - at least to our contemporaries - that the pendulum must swing in the other direction following such a mystical longing for spiritualisation and transfiguration. Historians significantly observe that at certain times the most somber renunciation of everything physical is found side by side with an almost indescribable delight in the senses. Such a complete reversal in ideas always appears to have been caused by military conflicts. In times of war, an individual is usually torn away from his community in city, town, village, castle or monastery. He no longer feels watched by his environment. On the other hand, at such times, he becomes more aware of ever-present death, which in turn intensifies his vitality.

Typical examples of the evolution of shame and modesty can be found if we carefully study the Thirty Years' War; Grimmelshausen's novel "Simplicius Simplicissimus" and other books of the time provide convincing examples and proofs which show how flexible these ideas arc and have always been. The common soldiers led a frivolous life. The commanders and officers caroused in orgies of sensual pleasures. And at the same time we meet the forest hermit, who castigates his body and despises earthly existence. The chastely draped hermit is shown side by side with the shamelessly naked soldiers' wenches, the deliberately gallantly dressed mercenary soldier side by side with the pious and hence simple young man raised in a monastery.

Who can still declare that shame and modesty are concepts whose limitations and definitions are indisputably fixed? Who, for instance, is "modest"? The old maid who wears a high-collared dress even in the heat of summer Or the young girl who wears her dress above the knee and yet wears long dark tights under it? Does modesty in decolletes extend 1, 2 or even 3 inches down? Why do we call a woman with a low-cut gown a "person without modesty", while the hairy chest of an athlete in gymnastic shorts is no longer considered immoral or lewd even by my grandmother today? Yet a few years ago,things were still quite different. In grandpa and grandma's youth, modesty extended down to a woman's ankles. And woe to the female who would dare to show her wicked legs.

Today the generation which we customarily call the "older" one has at least come to the point where a woman's legs are not considered to be immoral. But with the appearance of short skirts in the past years, excitement welled up promptly about the knees which would now be revealed to a greater or lesser extent.

Indeed, we could tear our hair and scream this question out into the world: "What in the devil's name is that shame and modesty you talk about so often? Where does it start and where does it end?"

The answer? Well, there isn't any. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. The argument which most often crops up in objective discussions is that shame and modesty consist primarily in concealing the sexual characteristics.

Is this so and can we accept this? Is a person who hides his sexual characteristics truly modest?

Retort: where do you start with this concealment and where do you stop? We can see that a man is a man from his beard, no matter how carefully he has shaved it off. Then a man, to be truly modest, must hide his face as well, or at least the lower part of his face. We recognize a man, if he isn't overly covered up, by his broad shoulders and narrow hips. Is he, then, to put on a shapeless cowl (this has actually been done and is still being done) in order to hide the fact that he is a male? A woman is recognized by her more rounded shoulders and wider hips and pelvis. Ergo, her shamelessness begins when these parts of her body are deliberately accentuated, which is after all no more than an invitation: Look at me, I am a woman. But this is exactly what is supposedly forbidden and frowned upon if one intends to be modest. And lastly we should not even be allowed to talk to each other any more if we had to hide all our sexual characteristics from modesty.

Let's go on a little longer talking about this question "logically". What does life consist in? Is it a renunciation of all things physical or a turning toward them? Of course, I know enough married couples who have never seen each other naked from sheer "modesty". But should not these people be pitied. And should not those be punished who drove them into so perverse a way of life through education, force, and threats of all kinds of sufferings?

Experience, on the other hand, teaches that natural impulses always find some way to break out within a person, insofar as he is healthy human being. Of course, nature often takes a roundabout way if forced to do so. The too-modest wife who puts out the light before each embrace is not infrequently the most lascivious when it comes to divulging other people's bed-room secrets, imagining them to herself or embroidering the details. And the man who is unsatisfied at home steals away secretly to a brothel, he has a library for amateurs and nowadays collects a certain kind of color slides to look at in his quiet hours.

Oh, of course people are modest. But not when they are alone. They are oh so moral - on stage. It is just that nobody may look behind the scenes. People get violently upset and disgusted about moral decadence and shamelessness - while with one eye they peek through the well-known knot-hole in the fence around the nudists' beach.

Where, now, are the sinners? On the side of the bigots and the fanatics? or on the side of those who make no secret of being human beings with all the consequences? It is quite beyond doubt that concepts which are subjected to constant change cannot represent any sort of permanent values. If what is permitted tomorrow is shameless today, then all one can do is turn away in horror - and go to join the nudists. For there you can find answers to all the questions which had to remain open of necessity in this article. You recognize, frequently with a mild shock, how hollow and empty traditional concepts of shame and modesty are. They've been polished up, distorted, readjusted and polished again so often that by now not much remains of them. When we look at them closely, they turn out to be a film of shimmering and slightly sticky oil over the face of today's society.

The spots where this shimmering film is being torn and pierced are on the increase. And every time such a gap is made some-where, our eye glimpses a nudists' beach, a sunny meadow, a shady wood - and joyous, free, happy people without distorted moral feelings and full of a natural modesty which consists simply and solely in respect for one's fellowmen.

(from Solis magazine, number 65.)