THE AGE OF FIVE HORSES

I think that this is how future historians will describe our era. There is, in fact, a very particular phenomenon here and which will undoubtedly have, which already has in part a very real influence on general social morality. We have been able to read, in recent days, that since the beginning of the year the police headquarters had issued more than seven thousand women's driving licenses. More than seven thousand women have therefore, in less than a year, acquired their chauffeur's license.

Let us leave aside the easy jokes about the dangers that this increase in perhaps inexperienced, or in any case nervous, and not yet trained in the reflexes essential to avoiding accidents, can cause to pedestrians and other vehicles. But let us note the emancipatory nature of such a state of affairs. Women, young girls were already used to going out alone; they are now taking the step of going out alone, but in cars, which significantly broadens their field of action.

And it is indisputable, moreover, that this automobile craze could only have developed through the introduction of light cars, easy to buy and drive. Thus, the major manufacturers, who have specialized in the establishment of these models, have a profound responsibility in the current evolution of morals, the extent of which they could not have measured in advance.

The war had already shown women that in many serious jobs they could replace men, who until then had kept them away from them. The practice of sports has brought the two sexes together in a similar emulation on the tennis courts or the lawns of the golf course. Now the steering wheel is also passing into female hands.

I know well that, as at the dawn of any major reform, there is here, to a large extent, a rush of fashion or snobbery. Worldly ambition demands a convertible today, as it did a bracelet yesterday, or an airplane tomorrow. But the fact remains that automatic start-up and easily removable wheels on cars that look a little like mechanical toys are preparing for us companions more ready to escape from male tutelage, which, it must be admitted, has really had its day.

PAUL ABRAM.