PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4680, 28 March 1924, Page 3

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS. " The Past, the Present, and the Future” was the subject of an address delivered by Mr D. O. Williams, M.A, at the Rotary Club at Wellington recently. All institutions, said Mr Williams, were rranscient, and having served their purpose. faded away to the oblivion they deserved. Our own institutions were passing away before our eyes, and unless tiiey did so there would be atrophy and decay. The speaker said he had no patience with fulsome adulation or people constantly turning back to the past. While we should take our hats off tc our forefathers for what they had done, we ought to take our coats oT and work for the future. Possibly the world suffered too much to day from ./verdone adulation and uniformed criticism. We were too desirous of being patted on the back by visitor to the country. Praising oneself wts a), excellent thing, but girding up the loins for work was better. More enlightened social reformers were wanted. The children were no: taught by their teachers to react emotionally. but were just drilled in intellectual abstractions was one of the speaker’s complaints against modern education. He considered that there was no democracy at present, but only mobocracy, a rule by masses without standards.