PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 November 1927, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

THE PRESENT GENERATION. There lias been a good deal of stocktaking about the present generation. The Church Congress have lately debated the whole matter with, as far as one can judge, more heat than light, while recently perturbed headquarters and head mistresses held a grand inquest on the subject, with results that could he more or less foreseen : one does not depreciate one’s own products. There has also been a certain amount of sporadic sniping in the daily Press by anonymous correspondents like “ Large Employer,” “ Bewildered Parent,” “Disgusted Sexagenarian,,” and others whose names we know so well. Like the poor, tlie present generation are always with us, and just as opinions of the poor vary from the Tennysoniun dictum of regarding them as bad in tlie lump to the soap-box orator’s cliche of their being a sort of exclusive and inexhaustible reservoir of all the nation’s virtues, so have opinions of the younger generation, especially in their formative years, been equally diverse. At one extreme we have bad the oldfashioned belief that the child is a potential criminal, and nothing but the light environment on quarantine lines can prevent his evil nature coming out. At the other extreme we have bail the Rousseau dogma that lie is born good, and that anything that goes wrong with him is the fault of his environment.—Cloudesley Brereton in the “ Contemporary Review.”

UNWISE CRITICISM. No generation is entitled to write or speak slightingly, contemptuously, i.r abusively of tho character of those wjio have gone before. AVe have no more right to do this of Victorian musicians, painters, dramatists, sculptors, or poets than will those who come after be justified in writing or speaking similarly of us. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” is a text that every critic- should have pinned to his desk! If Victorians —or, for that matter, tlie artists of any other epoch —so far from achieving artistic immortality, have sunk low in the estimation of their successors. and searcely seem likely to regain their old footing, at any rate tor a long time to come, it should always be remembered that fhe.v and then 1 work suited their own decade equally as well as our artists and their work suits us. In which case they deserve from us, even though we differ from them in our outlook, and our tastes can never bo reconciled with theirs, something better than criticism, which is no real criticism—that is, offensively contemptuous, hardly decent, personal attacks. Such at-tac-ks, moioovor, are a sure sign ot weakness, criticism that relies, even partly, upon such methods for its effect is a poor thing. AYc may he thankful that veil few critics take tins line, and that those who do are sparing in their use cf -t eYt we must, and most of us do ‘ resent attacks of the kind when they arc made.-S. E. Lucas in “Musical* News and Herald.”

HUMAN RELATIONS. “The problem of human relations,” stated Air H G. Emnierson, secretary of the delegation appointed by the Government to study industrial conditions in Canada and the United States “arises in any organisation with moie than a few numbers, and it will continue whatever change may occur in the ownership. Management i« in a position of leadership and control, and its share for industrial confusion and conflict must consequently be large. It is always a temptation to ignore the subject of industrial relations so long ns no open breach occurs. This attitude of letting sleeping dogs lie cannot be maintained under modern conditions. To-day increasing importance is being attached to the inter-relations Between industries, and there tare signs on every hand that in future, policies will he framed on an increasingy wide basis, in which bankers, employers’ organisations, and the gen-

era! body of trade unions will each play a part.”