THE BOGUS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

THE BOGUS.

Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, M.P., describes in the "Manchester Guardian" numerous humbugs or bogus men ha has met. He says he knows bogus men who are school masters. The habit of exercising undisputed authority gives tbem their chance. They pose before their boys, and by clever suggestion delude parents into supposing they are men of note outside the school walls. The parents are often taken in; the boys ara not. Boys are uncannily discriminating judges of character. "I never knew a bogus boy," be says. "He would have been mercilessly exposed at once. But I have known utterly undistinguished boys blossom into bogus m'en, finding the adult world much more easily gulled than the yoiuiger generation. Boys, whether it be their masters or their fellows they are weighing in the balance, recognise, as if by instinct, the sliam, the false, the fraudulent, the pretentious and the spurious. Money, rank or parents' careers do not count with them at all. Their methods may be ruthless and their tests crude, but their standard is sound and their .judgment unerring."