DEAN INGE ON THE PRESENT DAY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20091, 21 November 1930, Page 11

DEAN INGE ON THE PRESENT DAY.

A BITING CRITICISM.

PRAISE FO3 THE VICTORIANS

(UHITED PRESS ASSOCIATION —BY ELKCTBIC TELEOHArU —COFTIUQHT.) (Rceeived November 20th, 7.50 p.m.) LONDON, November 19. Dean Inge challenges the world with an announcement that be belongs to the 'eighties, and asks: "Why should I be nßhamcd of it? Were r.ot the girls prettier and better behaved than the moderns? They did not smoke, swear, and dfink, and they showed that they wore possessed of backbone, without oculur demonstration.

"Were not Tennyson and Browning greater poets than the coterie of Georgians? Were not Gladstone and Disrc.uli bigger men than any .of our present-day leadersT Was not sixpence in the pound income tax better than anything up to 10s. Was not the country then a going concern, instead of almost a gone concern? "Then, the wealth of Britain was proverbialj to-day the shadow of bankruptcy is heavy across Lancashire and Yorkshire. "I wish the Victorians could come to life and tell our generation what we really look like; but 1 suppose that fifty years hence some old fogey will be writing about the dear old 'thirties. I wonder what he will find to any in their praise 1"