THE CURFEW BELL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 133, 14 September 1910, Page 4

THE CURFEW BELL.

The National Council of Women at Sydney have been discussing the need for a curfew ibell in Australian towns so that children hearing it may go off the streets and so to bed. It reminds us of a childish story. iSaid the mother, "Go to bed, son; all the little chicks have gone. They never want to stay up after dark." Replied Son: "But their mother goes to bed the same time as they do." From which one draws the obvious conclusion that the modern child desires the privileges of its parents. The Council of Women, in urging the usefulness of the curfew Ibell as a means of keeping children off the streets at night, pointed out that 1000 towns in the United States had instituted the system, and that children naturally cleared off the highways as if it were a veritable school bell. The women who counselled the introduction of the curfew bell are supported in some measure by judges, mag?istrates and others, both in Australia and New Zealand. Generally, the New Zealand judge or magistrate who is brought face to face with a case of juvenile indiscipline, or worse, says: " I don't know what the young generation is coming Jo." Any State that sends children home per curfew bell and makes penalties for disobedience does not really accuse children. It accuses parents of -being too weak to govern their offspring. Freedom and the society of their kind is as natural to children as it is to any I young animals, and if it is wrong for children to be free the parent does the wrong. It is impossible for the State to insist on the perfect home life, and when the State finds it necessary to become a parent to somebody else's children, it wears a Iblue uniform or a ■wig. The State with its curfew bell is coercive. The natural parent should use the dwijliue of affection, there is ar

other phase. In a city lilce Sydney there are many thousands of children and youths. A National Woman Councillor talcing her walks abroad might see a couple of hundred undisciplined children out after dark, but although she might make the allegation that the home life of the community was shocking, there would be no reason to believe her. Colonial children generally may be the undisciplined and evil persons philanthropists and others allege, but we don't believe it. There is certainly a too great freedom given to children of some classes, but the freedom of one or two per cent, is not necessarily a national catastrophe. It is not altogether clear whether, the curfew bell of the United Stales Police has stopped divorces, or graft, or murders that go unpunished, or trusts or any other evil. It is indeed not certain that the moral bell has spread its influence to the police themselves. We believe that if the National Council of Women were to make a house to house canvass of parents and exhort them to discipline their children, they would get a bad hearing, and further that the driving home by the police of tile few children who wander the streets in all colonial cities at night would be one of the duties that would not take the ordinary policeman out of his regulation stride.

THE GIFT OF ORATORY., "Wherever did you learn that language?" asked the clergyman to a worker who was pouring forth a stream of common everyday curses. "Lor' bless yer, sir," said the worker, "you carn't learn it; it's a gift!" And oratory is just as much a gift as poetry or painting, sculpture or science. Mr. Justice Chapman recently spoke at the Plunket oratorical competition in Wellington, and he made the accusation that forensic oratory had wofully declined in the Courts of Justice. It- has not declined. It cannot decline, because nobody can learn it. It's a gift. The man who painfully learns the art of oratory or the art of anything else, may ibe a very polished exponent, but he is the gaspipe without the burner, the ship without a rudder, the electric wire without the spark. The real orator is the person who orates because he lias something to say that must be said and because he loves to say it. Oratory is more potent than books, or Acts of Parliament, or police courts, because it contains the vital spark. The real orator is not necessarily an exponent of the correct use of the language he speaks in. The man who never makes a mistake never makes anything. Everybody knows that the allegation of Mr. Justice Chapman that many young members of the Bar speak badly is true. Refinement of speech is not eloquence, any more than china eggs are potential fowls. It is a very good plan to teach refinement of speech on the ofTchance that a stray student may be an orator who will be able to use it, but you cant' make him a forensic success by insisting that he shall not clip his words, or chew his vowels, or drop syllables, or talk through his nose, or obliterate his aitches. We know that the English language is wofully lacerated in the school, in the parliament in the street, in the courts and in the pulpit, but no one ever went to hear a barrister or a parson, or a judge, or a schoolmaster lecture because he had thoroughly mastered the mechanism of spoken language. Oratory blossoms less among students than among any other class. Oratory is' in the individual, not in any method of teaching. No system gave Calve her voice, or Carlyle his power of expression, or Keats his poesy, or Confucius his analytical power. No system can teach oratory, because it's a gift. By sedulous practice the stupidist person may learn the correct use of phrases for public speaking, but when his time comes for trying his acquired oratory on the public the public feel like the ancient person who asked for bread and was given a stone.