WOULD YOU STRIKE A CHILD

Mt Benger Mail, 26 October 1938, Page 1

WOULD YOU STRIKE A CHILD

(By H. W. Seaman)

Juvenile crime has assumed the proportions of a wave in England recently and has aroused a strongcontroversy regarding methods'of correction for delinquents,-both in the home and at the hands of the law. In this article a parent well known to millions of Englishmen states what he thinks about it. “Take the boy home and give him the strap,” said Magistrate No. 1 to a father who had let his son get into wrong ways. “If you raise your hand to that child again I will send you to prison,” said Magistrate No. 2 to a father who had not spared the rod.

Truly children are a problem. So are magistrates. This wave of juvenile delinquency that we hear about is a problem. So is the great increase in the number of prosecutions of parents for cruelty to children. If figures do not lie there are more bad boys and girls about than ever before., . Last year the N.S.P.C.C. dealt with nearly 50,000 cases of cruelty, involving 121,000 children. So many youngsters were up for judgment at the recent Monmouth Assizes that Mr Justice Charles, who is Sir Ernest Charles when he is off the bench, took alarm. Trying to discover the cause of all this juvenile wickedness, he recalled his own boyhood. He said:

When I did wrong I was corrected, not by being sent to an approved school, but by that manner of correction which is so . valuable to young people, and which prevents them from again doing wrong, without any loss of their self-respect, and without loss of humanity in those who administered that correction. In short, he was walloped. Ought these growing youngsters to know? When they go wrong for want of knowing, ought they to . be handed over to the police and the magistrates for correction? Is the magistrate, ordering the birch, a better man than the boy’s father who, by a simple clout over the ear, might have prevented the boy from performing the act for which he is to.be birched? | Twenty years ago these qu.es- ; tions would have been absurd.

It is only recently that magistrates have begun to tell parent-' that if they lay hands on their own children they will go to gaol.

Mr Justice Charles dissents sharply from the views of thes< magistrates. He looks at the long list of boys and girls who have run foul of the laiv, and he says: The wave of sentiment that is passing over the country is not for the good of young people. I submit that it is not for the good of anybody. Sentimentality does not mean love, honour, gratitude, patriotism; it means avoiding the truth about these and all other honest emotions. Children have more opportunities to commit offences nowadays. Thirty years ago the • streets were playgrounds. If a boy put a tipoat through a window his father paid for ‘ the damage and took it out on the boy’s hide. Honour was satisfied- without police intervention. ’ Less Sentiment Then.

There was less sentiment and more common sense. Nobody would have 'asked such a ridiculous question as “Could you strike a child?”

But put that question now to the first six persons you meet and you will find they will dodge it. It is too blunt, for them. They would rather be asked something easy, soft and sentimental. Deepest in the sentimental mire is he who replies: “Yes, for the child’s own good.” When my father walloped me I used to bawl like a bull, and the louder I bawled the harder my father laid it on.

Nowadays the bawling would bring in the neighbours, and the neighbours would bring in the N.S.P.C.C., 'and tire hoy would he a martyr and the father a scoundrel.

In spite of the figures, I do not believe that parents are more cruel than they used ,to be. But lam not disetrssing cruelty, for there are not two sides to that. •• What is challenged to-day is a parent’s right to punish his own child in a proper manner.

Do I now thank my father for chastising me? No; lam indifferent .to it. Nor do I forgive him, for there is nothing to forgive. Since then I have brought up a child 1 of my 1 own,"arid from time to time I have had to take her to task.

If I were not trying to avoid sentiment and tell the honest truth I should express sorrow for striking my daughter. I should say that I had to strike her for her own good. That would be a sentimental lie. I never struck her unless I was angry. . Mr Justice Charles was right. We are so smeared over with sentiment that we cannot open our eyes and see the truth.

NATURAL TALENT The urchin swore a 'terrific oath. Old Lady: “Little boy, where .'did you learn to swear like that? Urchin: “You can’t learn that, mum; it’s a gift!” « • • * “Caddie,” he wailed, “this is a terrible golf course.” “Hoots, sir,” replied the caddie, “ye left the course twenty minutes ago. Ye’re in Mr MacAndrew’s rock garden. ”