DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 7, 30 March 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

YESTERDAY’S GOOD IS TO-DAY’S EVIL (Copyright 1927) A DVANCEMENT is not a ziiivt stride; it is a flight of stairs. The way we rp-ak-e not fry fij ip S , but by steps; not by going from evil to good, but by going from evil t lesser evil. . searded good of yesterday. Slavery is an evil not countenanced in any civilised land to-dar-Yet at one time it was good. It wa* a distinct moral advance over the old practice of murdering in cold blo°d all captives taken in warfare. Prize-fighting is looked upon as an evil now and many States have laws aimed to prevent it. ( But a. century ago prize-fight ng was a distinct advance over tpe brutality of the sports of former times. Even such a fight as one in IS2j when two men fought for 75 rounds with naked fists and the loser had to be put to bed with 50 leeches on him was a step up from the spectacles such as throwing ferocious dogs into a lions’ cage and watching them tear each other to pieces, which had delighted the people at a previous date. Some of the superstitions which were connected with religion in the past are now evils and repel men of greater intelligence instead of fright ening them into good conduct. They are an evil now, out at one time for more primitive people whom they kept from doing wrong they were a good. Duelling to-day is a crime. At one time it was a good because it was an advance over past customs. It gave both parties a fair chance instead of being a cowardly assassination. It substituted honour for am buscade and so at the time was a step ahead. To-day we have laws against beating wives. Wife beaters art gaolec and dealt with summarily. Yet a century ago in England wife beating «a f considered the right of a husband. A man might beat his wife within an inch of her life and go unpunished so long as she didn’t die. But if she died he was treated as a murderer That condition of affairs is hard to understand to-day. But it was an advance over the past when, in inci ent Turkey, the husband had the power of life and death over the inmates of his harem. It is as true that the good of to day may be the evil of to-morrow as it is that the evil of to-day was th good of the past. j The test of the times is not wi: ether there are evils or not, hut whether those evils are less or greater than the ones in the past: whether they are a step up or down. To-morrow—The Part of the Blarket That Keeps You Warm.