NATIONAL IDEAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5084, 4 February 1927, Page 1

NATIONAL IDEAL.

DEAN INGE ON GENTLEMEN. “Our national ide,al is a very important part of our character. By that I mean that which is the weekday religion of all Englishmen—that he is a gentleman,” said Dean Inge, in an address reported in the. London “Daily Telegraph.” “Even a. bishop would be more angry if you told him he was not a gentleman than if you had told him he was not a Christian. During the oligarchy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there, was a falling-off in 'the character <’£ the English gentleman, but I. think it is one of the advantages of the growth of democracy that it has helped to purify the ideal o>f the gentleman, which I claim to be the ideal of the national character. It has; pretty nearly abolished -the shocking notion that a gentleman may make a difference between debts of honour and debts, to a tradesman, and the still more shocking notion that he may apply a different standard of morality in his dealings with daughters of the poor and of his own class. We had quite got rid of, the 'i?btioin tha-; the ideal of a gentleman was a class distinction. We must try, while keeping what was good in our character, to cure ourselves of faults which other nations had found in us —a tendency to a cetrain indulgence in eating and drinking; a tendency to sloth and laziness ; a -tendency to arrogance; and also of that vulgar contempt of intellect, as if we were a privileged people, wbpm Providence, would see through without our troubling ourselves, -Slinking clearly, and working as hard as other people.”