Fear’s Salutary Influence.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1938, Page 6

Fear’s Salutary Influence.

Decadent Art.

Fear is a powerful motive to right conduct and behaviour, which are demanded by the State under penalty, writes Sir Robert Armstrong in The Times." The mind of the child (as shown by evident manifestations and gestures) is highly susceptible to fear. A burnt child dreads the fire and adults practise prudence and forethought—which are among the highest virtues —through fear, the claims of the future being felt in the. present. Is it not the fear of epidemics—for instance, of typhoid and diphtheria that the State employs as a cultured apprehension to preserve the public health 9 Fear is a necessary element in rewards and punishment and even the withdrawal of approbation is punishment based on fear.

Someone has sent me a copy, writes “Janus” in the “Spectator,” of a guide to the exhibition of decadent art which is now touring the principal cities of Germany under the auspices of one of the departments of Dr. Goebbels’ Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda. The purpose of the exhibition is to show what Germany has been saved from by Herr Hitler and his henchman. The works collected are by Jewish and Communist artists, or. as Goebbels would say, “artists,” and the reproductions in the guide are uniformly entertaining- if not uniformly edifying. Some ingenious juxtapositions of masterpieces of modern art with the productions of incurable lunatics in madhouses put a heavy premium on madness as against modernity. There is a lot to be said for such an exhibition iu London.