THE DECREASE OF NATIONAL COURAGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9630, 23 October 1909, Page 4

THE DECREASE OF NATIONAL COURAGE.

The Bishop of Durham, writing on "The Decrease of National Courage," as shown by the increase of suicide, says:—"One sorrowful feature of our period calls for grave attention. I mean the increase of suicide. I writu without access at the moment to statistics, but the broad phenomenon is notorious. Men and women, and sometimes quite young people, are reported as casting themselves out of life in numbers much,larger than even one generation ago, and the numbers are growing. It is no violation of tenderness to say, and to say with decision, that in we.'l-mgh every conceivable case suicide, where it is not due to manifest mental disorder, means a tremendous lapse nf courge. The dreadful act may be resolute enough taken in itself. But there is always an alternative which would be the braver course. It would be pos-

sible, by living, to face the enemy' again, to stand up to his attack, ' and to try what the deliberate valour ot patience could do. The loss, the disgrace, the moral failure,' the physical anguish, could still be confronted. And to confront them, in the spirit of the soldier who will not quit the post till his commander bids him go, would be the immeasurably braver thing."