The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1933. A WORLD ON EDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 283, 30 November 1933, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1933. A WORLD ON EDGE.

For the cause that laclcs assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that icc can do

"The country is on edge," said a New , York paper in commenting on the lynching at San Jose. This is true not only of America, but of other parts of the world as well. Many of the Nazi excesses are symptomatic of hysteria. There has been a loss of poise, a love of violence, an inability to see life steadily, that betoken some form of nervous, -emotional disturbance. This has made large numbers credulous of crude propaganda, impatient of the slow advance which must mark all true progress, and ready to give a willing ear to any who promise a short cut to prosperity. It might almost be said that "the whole earth is filled with violence." Much of this is due to the nervous tension under which whole communities and classes have been living. They see mass suffering everywhere, with apparently little hope of satisfying any of the legitimate ambitions of life. In Germany and many other European countries those who are now of voting age were sufferers as children from the privations following the war. They are the victims of malnutrition. "The adverse consequences," said a reeent rejiort on the psychological effects of the depression, "make a long and sinister catalogue." In this baleful catalogue occur with distressing repetition terms like "desperation," "bewilderment," "obsession," "cynicism," "restlessness," "fear." It says I that many previously well-balanced and respectable family men have been driven to seek surcease in baser passions. Mental hygienists have reported that already there is real evidence of an increase in the milder forms of mental disorder which may become serious later. Indeed, one finds it difficult to account on any other grounds than these of mental disturbances for many of the recent cruelties and oppressions. Sanity is partly a matter of bodily health. It is upset by strain and constant struggle against penury. The warning of the American paper is timely. -The explosive situation created in the United States by mass suffering, combined with long-standing contempt for law and order, may produce explosions with terrible results. There is a similar danger in other countries. It is therefore the duty of communities to do all in their power to relieve this suffering, to encourage hope, and to give such relief as may avert what might become a collapse of the whole social order.