A QUESTION OF MANNERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19996, 13 January 1927, Page 8

A QUESTION OF MANNERS.

On the decay of manners no doubt something instructive could be written in our own time. Manners constitute a valuable test of the nature of the upbringing of the individual, as well as of his qualities of head and heart. To be courteous seems to come natural to

some persons, even as to be the reverse appears to be all too easy to others. It will probably be agreed that the tendency of the young people of both sexes to-day is to be more self-assertive than were those of the previous generation and more indifferent to the feelings of other people. Perhaps it may be suggested that good manners do not now receive their proper place as an educational subject. But it may be contended with equal force that the root of the trouble lies in the fact that bad manners are too readily accepted as a matter of course, and are too generally tolerated. If, however, we all have our disappointments in this matter, we all have also our pleasant surprises, and probably in any case there is not very much to worry about. There are persons who occupy positions which bring them greatly into touch with their fellows, and in which their manners are a good deal, so to speak, on view. And there is a piquant interest in the circumstance that the official organ of the Public Service Association in the Dominion inaugurates the new year with a reflective editorial on the subject of “Manners in the Public Service.” It is suggested, and perhaps with some reason, that a Chevalier Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche, would harmonise ill with what are termed the hustling, sporting youngsters of our modern workaday world. “But at the same time we do not hesitate to say,” proceeds the Public Service Journal, “that there is to be found in'the public service of this country a type of young man that is an unworthy product of his time when viewed in the light of the best traditions of the Dominion.” It is added that the type is, fortunately, to be found only in a narrow circle, and usually its representatives are confined to some of the youjig men in Government departments and city offices who interview callers on business, “but officers whose duty calls them occasionally to other departments know how annoying it is to find the young man whose main function is to discover their needs supremely and calmly indifferent to their presence and business.” When the source of this complaint is considered, nobody, save perchance those at whom it is aimed, is likely to question the existence of justification for it. Everyone suffers on occasion from the superiority of young persons who are dressed in a little brief authority. But manners worthy of the four clerks of Messrs Dodson and Fogg, whose treatment of them so upset the feelings of Mr Pickwick and Mr Weller, certainly will not do in those who are literally servants of the public. The average citizen feeling aggrieved over a personal experience of the manners of young men in a Government office might well hesitate to involve himself, in the interminable and unsatisfactory business of a formal complaint. But when the rebuke to those against whom it is directed comes from such a source as the Public Service Journal itself, the circumstance may be accepted as an encouraging sign. “Manners makyth man” may yet become the motto of the Public Service of the Dominion.