"A SOFT RACE"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 141, 2 July 1937, Page 5

"A SOFT RACE"

-Own Correspondent.)

Dean Inge Deplores Modern Trends PURSUIT OF PLEASURE

(By Air Mail-

LOJNDUJN, June uu. ""We are becoming a soft, pleasureloviing, unenterprising race," Dr. Inge, fomerly Dean of St. Paul 'ti, told representatives of the Dominions and Colonies atteuding a serviee at Winchester Cathedral this week at wkicb he was the preacher. What, Dr. Inge asked, had become of this once energetic, hard-working nation? "We are flocking into great towns and leaving huge tracts of good land undeveloped. The cry 6s not eo much for more pay as for 'shorter and shorter hours of work, and the increasing hours of leisure are spent mainly on amusement whieh involves no physical or mental effort, spent" watching games and listening-in for hours together— and for the women there is dress and the -unpleasant use of cosmstics. There is less drunkenness, less violence. The roughest violence as not in favour. Tho^ idea is for shorter hours of work and the words of the advertising slogan: 'You press the button, we do the rest.' " Dr. Inge urged a return to colonisation. He said what we need all over the Empire was a return to the old Puritanism without itis hardness and narrow-

ness. "Can we deny that a life of plain livdng, hard work and high thinking is the best life?" he asked, adding: "There are two things for whieh the British flag stands all over the world — peace and freedom. I frankly cannot understand how any civilised nation which remembers the unspeakable horrors of the Great War can repudiate them and regard war as an ennobling proceeding. It is atavasm, a return to barbarism of the worst kind. It is unutterable folly."