THE MEN OUR FATHERS WERE.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 942, 15 July 1903, Page 3

THE MEN OUR FATHERS WERE.

(By Tohunga.)

The House of Lords, having consigned deceased wives’ sisters to celibacy for at least another session, have been stirring the Balfour Government up with another long stick. They are apparently determined to show that the ways of our forefathers were decidedly better than our ways, and want a Boyal Commission to show that- British workingmen are physically deteriorating. The doctors are to have first say, and then, if they agree, there is to be a great inquiry as to how, why, wherefore, and when we ceased to be the nation of men our fathers were. . This lioyal Commission might add to its labors a supplementary inquiry as to why the British aristocracy is morally de- I tenorating. Perhaps it isn’t, but if it has always been usual for hereditary Imperial law-makers to dance in skirts on the stage for money, to “ serve time ” for vulgar swindles, to play “ bridge ” while their country needed soldiers, and to marry high-kicking chorus girls when their country needed an example, it might be as well to let us all know. For most of us regard these things as signs of the utter degeneration of noble families, who in the past have done great deeds and have deserved public honor. But perhaps this would be. too much to ask of a cemmission inspired by the Lords, particularly when the inspiration is sincere and the topic of physical deterioration sufficiently difficult in itself.

I As for the physical deterioration—well, it is the sheerest stubbornness of patriotism

to deny Chat such a process is going on in the great British towns, as probably in all the towns of the world. Charles Kingsley noticed it in the English country districts, though in the country districts we have always to bear in mind the perpetual drafting away of the strongest and the most venturesome, qualities' usually, even though not 'invariably, associated with physical size, to India, to the colonies and to the cities. Yet even in spite of- this drafting from the country, one is impressed in England by the difference be-

tween the stature of the'people, in the townless areas of the far north and of the south and in the great town region that stretches from Mid-Lancashire to below Birmingham, and well-nigh from sea to sea, the former being still the fair England of romance and story and the latter one great smoky blister upon the face of our Mother. In Scotland the same is true. And even in towns one sees tremen-

dous differences in quarters. There is Princes-street, Edinburgh, the finest street in the world, set off by scenic effects that even New Zealand might be proud to own, and trodden by strapping Scottish girls and buxom Scottish women, who will compare with any race of any age, past, present, or—one is tempted to say—to come. And you turn from Princesstreet, with its hign-headed womankind, fit for the love of heroes and the mothering of scholars and soldiers, to the Pit of the Old Town with its canyon streets and its air-starved populace. Between them there is no gulf fixed, for many a braw Scot comes out of the Pit, and many a luckless or thoughtless Scot goes into it. But between their averages there is an impassable gulf, the gulf that lies, even in democratic Scotland, between those who have food and air in plenty from their birth and before their birth and those who have not.

We may take Scotland as subject for dissertation, because of all the lands in the world it is that which shows the best blend of the British qualities. There, society has formed class without caste, has made education and merit the ideal characteristics, has held its own against modern innovations, as nowhere else Anglo-Saxon society has held its own, and yet has absorbed modern tendencies as they have been absorbed in no other part of the world. “Thanks to John Knox,” some stout Scotsman will say. Ay, but John Knox had good stuff to work on, had the bone and the brain that is crowned by the gold-glinted looks of Princes-street, and by the darker hair of the Wilder West Country. Does any man imagine that General Booth could form a great nation from London slumß, that his Army could march against Cromwell’s afmy—for which latter, by the way, our Scottish kith have never quite forgiven their Southern kin- — or that his regenerated degenerates will match with the tall girls of Princes-street ? Yet in the Pit of Edinburgh are degenerates also, physically different from the standard of Prinoes-street, not merely shorter—-for merely shorter may be a physical selection having adapted strength for its motive, as witness the short, barrelchested sailor folk —but weaker in every bodily way. This is apart altogether from the Irish immigration of comparatively recent years. It is visible beyond doubt in pure-blooded Scots. Was it with them always, think you, or did Pit people sink downward while Princss-street held its own ? For don’t imagine Princes-street went up the scale. You can see and admire the Prinoes-street type wherever there are healthy-living, well-named Scots folk from end' to end of the world. The Princes-street type is the national type, the normal, the surviving,- not the warped, stunted, flat-chested type of the Pit. The latter is deteriorate, degenerate, dying out, perishing by slow degrees. That it should perish, being degenerate, is God’s mercy, but the question is always : Is degeneration inevitable ? Is it not possible to keep every child born to a people sound, healthy, and strong ? Must we forego building up our civilisations only to sacrifice on the altars of Destiny the bulk of our city populations ? For, you see, wo want all to remain physically the men our fathers were while becoming intellectually the men we think we are ourselves.

It cannot be questioned, it is beyond the possibility of doubt, to any man who has the least knowledge of breeding law, that underfeeding is the great cause of physical deterioration, and that if Society could secure the satisfactory feeding of the children of the Pit, they might die out in some other way, but they would not be likely to show their degeneration in that particular form. But Society would have an exceedingly big contract. It would have to begin with the parents and say a great many words to the mother. It would have to persuade those in charge that not the amount by a child, but the amount digested, was the question, and that surrounding conditions had more to do with digestion than even doctors commonly think. It would have to hang a few of those who gave baked flour to babies and pillory any doctor who helps to puff any artificial food. It would have to bombard every town which al lowed air to circulate with less than a minimum percentage of oxygen, and to allow no window panes unless the householder had a certificate of competency as to ventilation. And it would have to hire Dr Makgill to inoculate the women of the Pit with a little of that Spartan • instinct which •shares no “ grown-up ” food with a child, but gives it Regularly not quite enough of the plainest of plain foods and gives it just enough in the fresh air to make it come ravenous to meals. In other words you would have to wipe the Pit out, with all its weaknesses and its foibles, and its yieldings, and scatter its denizens broad*ase in the open fields, after imbuing them with the . strength of purpose and canfidence in theories which is stamped upon the strong jaws and straight noses of Princes street.—N.Z. Herald.