The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. A GRAVE PERIL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 192, 17 September 1909, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. A GRAVE PERIL.

Those who are disposed m take a di! spondcnt view of tuc social outlook ca'i lind many conditions in our environment that may well cause alarm; The increasing love of amusement, the growth of professionalism in sport, the neglect, of attention to religious ordinances, the rebellion against wholesome restraints, the choosing of the meretricious and the gaudy rather than the real and the serviceable, as well as many othe,- defects in character belonging to the day in which we live, give occasion for re'lH-ction to those who ale earnest seekers alter the best means for general improvement. The Chivf Justice of Victoria, in the course of a pleasant Sunday afternoon address, of which a summary was recently cabled, called attention fn. very plain language to the menace to the whole communcy that lurked in the freedom with whhdi young girls were allowed to parade the streets, public parks, and beach resorts after dark, unattended by their elder'. The practitcc is a common one in t'K Dominion, as well as in -all the Australian States, and therefore the warning, coming from such an authoritative source, should, as the Dunedin Star points out, not be permitted to pass unheeded. It may be mentioned that Sir John Madden is not by any means nun-

tunica! in his ideas, and'that he continues in hie later years to take as keen an interest in all manly sports as when in early manhood he showed his athlct c skill. Tfe looks at the evil against which he emphatically raised his voice, with a judicial eye, and began his ".d----dress by warning the women of the community that "if they were iiidispoic.il j to regard virtue and purity as being of | great importance, and if they would not impress their importance on. their child-

ren, then the results would be so far- ! reaching and disastrous that war, famine, and pestilence were incomparably I milder affliction*.'' . As to the extent of [ the, evil he directed attention to the practice of large numbers of little gir's, | attractive, well dressed, but obviously only children, wandering about at night, sometimes with men, sometimes in search of them. The result of this deplorable freedom from parental restraint was to be found in the records of their charitable institutions—particularly in the Women's Hospital and m the Carlton Refuge. Referring to his experience on the Bench, his Honor said that in a case tried before him recently the mother was barely over twelve and a-half years old. He further noticed the depravity of children when giving evidence in maintenance cases. Tli" causey leading to the existence of such deplorable conditions were. Sir John j thought, to he found primarily in the ■ lessened control of parents over their I children, and the manifest decay of that I -.litigious sense which was the great I buttress of the moral character. 'le I further thought that the blank between the time children If ft school and four-

teen and when they were placed in employment should be filled up with compulsory training of some sort that would keep them off the streets, and where the responsibilities of their adult life would be impressed upon them. As might be expected from a Supreme Court Judge in the role of lecturer, the scales oi justice were evenly balnn-ed when considering the mca-nrc of blame attaching to youthful transgressors -if both sexes. 'While the girl sufferer, ruin, absolute and irretrievable, lasting for a lifetime, the man. apart from the moral stain and its consequence on lite character, suffered no material loss, fn a preventive direction a FurTher step reeoinniendeii was that of calling upon the putative father in maintenance eases to prove his innocence when it was shown that he had been misconducting himself with the mother. Of course, his Honor fully realised that dilficu.tv in bringing legislation to bear o n the purification of morals, and recognised that the tone of the community coui.l be more deeply influenced by an nwikened public opinion.

J, One thing that would have a great i > effect would be the resolute moral c- ] J sentment of the whole body of the ~ public against those evil things to ■ • which he referred. If they roused '' themselves to a recognition of wh.it !, is threatened, if they regarded it Tor i> the shocking and desperate evil tint J | it was, the effervescence it wonH ~ cause would bring about if not by u the means he had suggested!, tlpii J | other means by which they would end <. the evil, and ensure that no blot so <> foul or desperate should rest upon ~ . the face of Australia.

Our contemporary says there may be excellent reasons for doubting whether the remedies suggested by Sir John Madden could be carried out, or that they would prove effective in repressing the evil. The plea so often raised in plea of more liberty and loss restriction in households is radically wrong, especially for the younger "members, who have to be guided in right ways by their elders. The educative value of restraint is very finely pointed out by Russia in "The Two Patlis," where he' says:

Wise" laws and' just restraints anto a noble nation not chains, but chain mail—strength „nd defence, though sometimes also an encumbrance. And this necessity of restraint, remember, is just as honorable to a man as the necessity of labor. Sou hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it were such «ih honorable thing. So far from being that, it is, on the whole, and in tlibroadest sense, dishonorable, and :i.n attribute of the lower creatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always something that he must or must not do, while tic li.-h mnv do whatever he likes. You will find, on fairly thinking it out, that it is his Restraint which i.s honorable to mivi. not his Liberty.

If this be true of children of a larger growth, howunuch more necessary is the. application of restraint to children anl the adolescent, in order that thev miv be taught lunv to avoid the pitfal'ls that will surely beset their path through faction, h connection with this impo-t----nnt subject, that while the percentage of illegitimate births for the past «evui years has been over C per cent, in thu Commonwealth, in New Zealand during the same period it has ranged from 4..V7 to 4.01. As n corrective to phiirisnicai congratulation in this regard, it is ,y,.;| to remember that the rate of illec,; imacy in Ireland is only 2.5. and in En"land and Wales 3.!) per cent. r