NATIONAL DECADENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 53, 2 March 1916, Page 7

NATIONAL DECADENCE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Apropos of the telling remarks made by Admiral Beatty on the above subject, already referred to in your columns, I was much struck with a statement from the pen of that popular novelist and keen observer of men and things, John Oxenham, on the same theme. The article was written.as far back as November, 191 Lin reply to a request from the Editor of the "Quiver" for the novelist's views on a then prominent subject; and as Oxenham can hardly be termed a pessimist or be accused of undue bias, I trust you will find space for the insertion of salient extracts therefrom. That.there' is much that calls for adverse comment in our national life, both here as well as in the Old Land, will be obtiO—r to the most casual observer, and because the following observations are timely in this year of grace, 1916, I crave .yonr, indulgence. Said he:—"lt is painfully, evident that' tho paramount demands of the majority of all .classes are for pleasure, and for money as the means thereto. Such ends and such means, and their interaction one upon the other, account for most ol what we have to deplore in the present state of things. For years past there has 'been a steady laxing of the national fibre—spiritual, moral, mental. Men care for none of the higher things. They want pleasure and money, money and pleasure. Ethics, social and business, are lower to-day than" thirty years' ago. In both men will do to-day what their fathers would never have dreamed of doing. And the cure for it all? That is beyond mc. What we need is a national return to higher aims and simpler ways. But how these are to be 'brought about I cannot tell. Possibly by the whip—by national disaster, and thereby and thereafter a moral, mental and spiritual re-, nascence. Possibly, as in the past, by the uprising of some great, magnetic, white-fired soul or souls, who shall win a hearing even from deaf ears;, and draw men after them to nobler ways. T3—tat. maybe soon we must all devoutly hope and pray. For if the*present flux continues, Britain, in spite of all her brave outward show of prosperity and power, must inevitably in the end go the way of all those others who 'forgof and belit their souls wholly to material things.-''— I am, etc., . C. H. RALPH: ■'