THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 1944. Danger of Moral Collapse

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 56, 9 March 1944, Page 4

THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 1944. Danger of Moral Collapse

A warning that the break-up of family life, as the result of conditions imposed by the war, and indicated as a great potential danger to the English-speaking nations, with special emphasis on New Zealand, was given in an address delivered at the Palmerston North Rotary Club this week. The authority of the statements made, Miss Elsie Bennet, general secretary of the Y.W.C.A., Auckland, is one to be respected. Indeed her frank and impressive analysis of the moral situation of our country left a deep impression upon her hearers. With Unvarnished bluntness, a grim picture was drawn of conditions existing in New Zealand cities—“where child delinquency was assuming frightening proportions.” The speaker frankly admitted that this did not apply only in New Zealand, for the same problems were to be met in Australia, America and Britain. Child delinquency and the alarming increase in the marriage vows were part and parcel of the same disturbing moral decadence affecting the English-speaking peoples. A quotation from Lord Elton was most appropriately given—“That something essentially precious is passing away from Us—family life.” For .as Miss Bennet declared: “Only a thin line stands between the militant forces of evil with their attendant rottenness and decay and the sacred virtues on which the nation’s life is built.” That thin line was family life; reinforced and aided only by the voluntary efforts of the churches and such welfare organisations as she represented. Agreement will be registered by all thoughtful people with her declaration that this decadence evidenced in the nation was not just a present war phenomenon. The speaker held that it was a delusion to dismiss the current problem simply by saying “it was the same in the last war.” The fact of the matter is that there has been for a quarter of a century since the last war a trend towards what might be termed “easy living”—the seeking of the easy way out in life—a tendency on the part of all too many to disregard duty, responsibility and virtue as being of much consequence. That this should have been so causes misgiving for the success of efforts to bring about a moral new order, for that is what the world requires. Have the church and education failed in their duty? Of is it the people who have failed the church? And if this be so, then is that due to faults in cUr educational system? Has it been altogether too material in its aim? Deep questions these, but if they be not answered, what is to become of the human race ? Is the great British Empire to wither away just as did the Roman Empire twenty centuries ago?