CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 239, 15 February 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

WAVES OF SELF • DESTRUCTION. Line many visitations that vitally affect Immunity, suicides frequently come in waves. The appalling number of suicides which have lately taken place in New Zealand give color to the belief that .such crimes are epidemic. There is no doubt at all that one suicide may lead to many others, that every self-destroyer is mentally unsound, and that his mental unsoundness is not caused by any example set by contemporary suicides. It may he taken for grunted that suicides who have committed self-destruction in imitation of other persons would have been still predisposed to crime even il there had been no immediate example to follow. News of the self-destruction of any person is always received with the greatest surprise by his or her immediate friends, and circumstantial details, generally by way of showing that the deceased was exceptionally cheerful or most obviously sane, are common. The mentally afflicted arc so very frequently able to deceive the moat expert into a belief in their sanity, and the borderline between sanitv and mental aberration is so very slight that no expert would accept cheerfulness or apparent sanity five minutes previous to suicide as proof of normal reason. There is no

doubt that certain sets of conditions will bring about waves of any kind of crime, including seli-desti'uction. A spell of trying weather —and that which has been experienced ill Taranaki lately is a good illustration —would affect the whole community, and while its effect would be merely disagreeable to the normal mind, it might be extremely dangerous to an abnormal one. National disasters spur the strong to greater endeavor, but they aro invariably followed by the elimination of many people of unsettled mentality by self-destruction. We have already shown that crimes of all kinds are commoner during periods of holiday, and New Zealand is a very curious example of this fact. By far the largest number of crimes, fatalities and disasters (including suicides) take place between Saturday morning and Monday morning; the percentages of suicides is much greater in the North than in the South; the people incarcerated at Avondale arc' much harder to manage and arc generally more violently insane than those at Seacliff. Circumstances do not necessarily create insanity or a desire for selfdestruction, which is a phase. They merely give the opportunity for crimes that would probably be committed at some time or other. The careful contemplation of self-destruction, the cunning arrangement of details, demonstrate beyond doubt mental aberration. It is, in fact, easier for the person who commits siuciue to effect his purpose than for him to live and face the circumstances which revealed his insanity. If a suicide were sane, the act would be one of cowardice. As he is never sane, his act ' beyond his own control. It is ai.police offence to commit suicide, but except that police care might prevent further attempts, it would be as reasonable for diphtheria to be made a police offence. Our barbarous forefathers were so convinced that suicide might be committed while the self-destroyer was in sane mood that they "punished' 'the poer dead clay by burying it at four cross roads, with the usual stake thrust into it. This was a method that merely hurt the living and spurred abnormal folk to suicide. Fortunately, nowadays a better understanding and a greater kindness for those who remain guide authorities in the exercise of a doleful duty.

THE BRITISH GENTLEWOMAN. When we admiringly remark "she is a perfect lady," we mean that she approximates most closely to the character of a British gentlewoman. There are women who go out washing who are perfect ladies and women who live in castles wlip are not, but for the purposes of this argument it can be stated- that British women of gentle birth and good education are so imbued with the ideals of their kind, inculcated by generations of training and contact, that they approximate most closely to the general ideal of what a lady should be. It is interesting that Princess Christian, herself a woman of the most lofty ideals, and whose splendid service to humanity is her chief quality, should be instrumental in seeking careers for gentlewomen in the dominions. The cablegram latelypublished is not new news, for the committee of which she is chairman was set up at least a year ago. This committee contemplates the formation of little settlements, in which the women who take advantage of the scheme may turn their intelligence to useful account. It was formerly stated that they would undertake bee-farming, fruit and flower culture, anil other pursuits of a kind to wliioh good taste and general knowledge might be successfully applied. People who mny bo inclined to doubt the fighting capacity of the British gentlewoman have only to glance at the history of both New Zealand and Australia 1 to be convinced that they, equally with their sisters who had not the same advantages of training, ideals and education had the greatest effect on the destinies of liotli countries. Training and the living up to a rigid standard of conduct—gentleness, self-abnegation, courtesy, kindness and the common virtueshave been mighty weapons for conquest in all new countries. If we would understand the .stuff of which British gentlewomen are made, we must imagine them amidst the horrors of the Indian mutiny, underground in besieged Kimborlev, far back in the heart oi early Australia, or pioneering with the finest type of men who ever came to this country in the eailv days. New Zealand owes mors than it knows to the men and women of gentle blood and high ideals, who laid the foundations of our prosperity in the early days, and whose names are still treasured by people who affect to' believe there should be no gradations j„ society, lint who at the same time recognise anil honor either the '•perfect lady or the "perfect gentleman.''