DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 29, 27 April 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

WHEN DO YOU LIVE? (Copyright, 1927.) question, ‘ Where do you live,” is the same as the question, “When do you live?” One of the things that strikes the traveller to Europe that in almost every country he visits there seems to be a lifetime or so behind the United States. When you cross the boundary into Mexico you seem to drop back two hundred years. Because it is 1927 is no proof that everybody is living in that year. There are people living in the Victorian age. There are those who cling not only to the habits and dress, but the ideas and points of view, of a former time. It is rare to find a modern mind, that is, one fully abreast of progress and easily accepting the last dicta that have been established. It is not true that reforms are popular. On the contrary, the mind of most people is set against reform. They are reactionary, and get along much better with things as they used to be. Doubtless there are places in the Orient where the ideas of a thousand years ago are still prevalent, and there are spots in Europe where the point of view of long since vanished aristocracy holds sway, just as there are places in the United States where people pass laws against evolution and indignantly declare that the sun does move around the earth. In fact, contemporaneous history is far from contemporaneous. Mr. Zangwill points out somewhere that instead of the middle ages and the ancient regime being things of the past, they are now to some extent here and there extant. In Mexico the climate is not a matter of north and south, but of up and down. On the lower levels it is tropical, but as you ascend the heights it becomes colder. . In the same way, you do not have to go back in years to get ancient history. All you have to do is to cross a boundary. There are perhaps a few forward minded people. They are living in the years to come, and it will take the world some time to catch up with them. i