WARNINGS OF MORAL DETERIORATION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 76, 22 December 1937, Page 4

WARNINGS OF MORAL DETERIORATION

From many competent qnarters throughout the Dominion come warnings of the all too rapid tendency to individnal disregard for the rights and property of other people, accompanied by a spirit of wanton destruction. Of the latter we have of recent weeks had local examples that really cry shame upon the commiinity that fosters the offenders. Publie parlss and other resorts whieh, belonging to all, might he expected to command respeet from all have been especial marks for the exhibition of this spirit, and even God's Acre has not been held sacred from the attentions of those who would seem to he bereft of all feelings of decency and cannot but be elassed as along with the lower anirnal creation utterly incapable of moral perceptions and distinctions., How many there may be of them it is, of course, quite impossible to say, but, many or few, they constitute a very decided reproach to our modern civilisation, with all its educational advantages. There cannot but also be a growing conviction that the virtue of common honesty that lies at the foundation' of our so'cial and commercial systems commands nothing like the respeet it did among past generations. Possibly the most notable manifestation of this, or at any rate the one that most frequently strikes the public eye, is the virtual theft of motor vehicles, which our law has chosen to distinguish as "conversion," only because there is presumed to he no purpose of permanently depriving the owner of his property. But more often than not it is recovered, if at all, in a more or less damaged condition. And by far the most pitiable feature of this new erime, so characteristie a development of the times, is that in the vast majority of cases it is attributable fo yonng folk, thus affording but se&nt hope that there will be improvement as generation follows generation. Then, also, as a Judge of our Supreme Court, out of the plenitude of experienee, has seen fit to point out, both the spoken and the written pledge, whether in business or otherwise, are daily losing the sanctity which had previously made them the sure basis of our daily life. It is very obvious that if • we are to develop a social system in which the given word of its. members is to count for little or nothing, then most surely are we on the way to chaotic conditions that must spell national disaster. Then, looking round, the observant cannot but rccognise that in many other respects the moral fibre of the people is in process of degcneration. The evils that thus threaten us as a people most manifcstly call for a thorough diagnosis and analysis if the causes are to be ascertained* and the cure to be diseovered. It may be, no doubt is, that so far it is the minority who are affected, but the trouble is one that must prove highly infeetious unless means are adopted for checking its course. And, as has been indicated, it is among the younger folk that its spread is most greatly to be feared, so that it is among them that the remedy when found, must be most definitely applied. Taking a superficial view, some explanation can doubtless be found in the rapid disappearance of parental control, direction and influence and of the home life in which (they may* best be- exercised. Then undoubtedly, too, as another recent speaker has suggested, the lack of religious instruction, whether within or outside our schools, has a good deal to do with the lapse, for no country can progress or hold together that has not got a religious system whose moral and ethical tenets command more or less universal respeet and observanee. Probably, however, most insidious and so most dangerous of all are the communistie doctrines whieh, though we may not care to adijiit it, are gradually gaining ground and, again, most notably among the thoughtless youth of the country to whom their comparative local novelty and promise of greater freedom from restraint naturally commend them. That there is a strong trend in this direction can scarcely be questioned, and who shall- say that it is not, instead of being checked, reeeiving, even if unintentionally, very considerable encouragement from those in high places who vehemently disclaim association with the missioners most busy preaching the gospel of communism?