SMOKING AND STRONG LANGUAGE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 286, 29 August 1919, Page 9

SMOKING AND STRONG LANGUAGE

AKE THEY GAINING ON US r Professor Gilbert Murray, an arresting lay preache: , , chose, un interesting tliemo for.a rocont uddress to tho Civic and Moral Education League. "Can we," lie' asked, "make 'any' moral estiI'linto of our own time? Jt seems that iiot only are wu unable to judge whether we are as a community moving towards health or away from it; wu cannot even say what health is. We were gaining cu alcohol, but tobacco and bad language seemed to bo gaining on us. "Tobacco," sukl tiio professor, "is t» Blight narcotic poison; the use of bad language 1 take, to bo due to a slight nervous convulsion momentarily destroying self-control and reltysing certain subconscious interests, such as extreme rtuy* and love of filth, which are normally suppressed. Ido not venture to piv nounce whether tho use of this slight narcotic and tho management of this slight nervous eonvuLeiou am beneficial or otherwise, or whether, as somo suggest, they should bo confined to woinei and people, of sedentary habits; but i 'would'call attention to what 1 think is thu iact, that 'never in the history of the- world lias thero beon a society in which'Loth'men and women 'were so habitually under' the influence-of these two. sedatives as.at present." ' "A hopetul ontiu wight suggest that, as wu stnggL'r back into cquilibriu.'u, hygiene will correct thu. one and social decency the 'other—although no one'would imagine that English behaviour is evorlikely to gu buck to the conventions of the Victorian parlour," says the "Daily News." "Apnrt, however, from tho examples touched upon by i'rofessor Hurray., is it not.true Hint as lugiirds cerium iuiutters of ruml. moment the availablo evidence woulJ imp>l us to anything but an optimistic conclusion—lor instance, Boximl ethics and for truth? Tin? changes in thu . sex ' relation may well juove to Ijo the gravwt of the emluriny results' of the war in Western society! As tor the habit of lying, we may call a Cambridge'authority to witness. ~\ few day* ago Sir diaries WnJston, hithori.i more concerned with the fine arts tin* witn morals, sent, out a little volume on O'ruHi, wlui'ii he might '.nore approurialcly h:ivo lalicllcd 'Tho Lie in ilod>.rn Life,' since it is mi almost unrelieved ii;<li(Mri7eut of tho unveracity—social and political, commercial and professional—iu which tho iiKnlun social organism ie iitillcd. if L'lolfssor Murray had nnplied his own fine judicial method to an analysis of Sir Chark-a W'alston's thesis, he would, we doulit not, liavo found i;\ English politics, coninicrce, and journalism jimch more eiicuttrngeiueut than is dig. cerniblc l» the censor of the sislcr iiniversitj. But, assuredly, he would have had to agree Hint in this essential matter of keeping faith in our dealings wo ' are not noticeably better than oiir grandsarente." l