’VARSITY STUDENTS

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1932, Page 3

’VARSITY STUDENTS

MORALS AND IXTELL GEXCE. TEN COMMANDMENTS NOT KNOWN. VANCOUVER, March 7. The average of intelligence in the student body of the universities has gone down in recent y'ears, according to Dr , George M. Weir, .head, of the Department of Education at the University of British Columbia. “But that is because more are there There are just as many clear and clever thinkers in our universities now as ever before.”' he said Morals, said Dr Weir, are 'the customs and habits of a people. To-day the world is wandering in a bewildering maze of changing conceptions of what is right and wrong. “If a young woman smoked a cigarette in public 14 ye airs ago she would he considered hard-boiled. To-day, if she does not, I’m afraid her friends think her hallbaked. And there have been tunes when men were put to death for smoking or even for drinking coffee.--. As to who .is moral and how his morality is 'to be known there, was a wide variance of thought. “Any business man is expected to advertise, but if. is unethical for a physician or a surgeon to do. the same thing—that is, to tell the world what he lias to sell. “Is truth something static, solid, infallible and unchangeable, or does it vary with the times A recent college survey showed that few students know the Tell Commandments. 1 myself have known prominent merchants who did not know all the. words of the Golden Rule, but the important thing is that they understood its moaning. Is , it theft ito sell a man a house for a down payment and credit when you know he cannot pay? Legally it i« not, but morally it is,” Dr \Voir declared, adding that it was illegal,, but in his opinion not immoral, for a starving man to steal a loaf of britid. “As a matter of fact,* stealing seems to depend upon who does it. The big lellows get away with it.” he said, with caustic reference to the recent Beauharnois scandal. "On own young people share in the comma' knowledge of that graft 1 and scandal and see ill it a way to enrich them selves and get away with it.

•'•One example like that is more den gerous than all the- talse teachings o Communism, which refute themselves, he said.