OUR ALLEGED SINFULNESS

Shannon News, 2 May 1924, Page 4

OUR ALLEGED SINFULNESS

, Canon Bellingham professes to have discovered that golfing on Sundays. is a pernicious evil, calculated, y 1 hideous influence, to 'destroy all hope for the, soul’s salvation of those avlio indulge in it, and an American evangelist is supplementing this doctrine of despair by giving quite unnecessary advice to our girls about keeping out of dance halls, shunning the streets, and avoiding midnight runs m automobiles. Both gentlemen infer that /the community is corrupt, that the ! tendency of youth is towards spiritual degradation, and that social conditions generally are becoming unsavoury—to use the ambiguity so beloved of 'the soi-distant reformer. Anybody who lias traA r elled in the newj or the old, world , will, as a rule,! admit that nowhere have vice and j immorality made less headAvay \ than] in Australia, and that our homebornJ race is, as deecnt- as any in blood and outlook. If, therefore, are addicted to surfing and dancing —we are content to leave the United States in full possession of the mid- . night automobile ride habit —it is not because we find sensuality in either, but because we experience in both recreations a natural exhilaration whiejh brings spontaneous joy and physical profit. To normal beings, neither is a cjoak for wrong-doing or wrong-thinking, or for any attributes of the so-called whited sepulchre amusements. As for warning our young women to / keep off the public streets "after certain hours,” Dr.Biederwplf might have spared himself the effort. If he takes a walk through the city “after certain hours” he will himself realise how gratuitous was his adAfiqe. It has always, indeed, been extremely puzzling to New Zealanders that American missionaries can spare the t|me to come amongst them, when there is such obvious, need for soul reclamation in the United States.