LOOKING BACK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOOKING BACK.

CONDITION OF ENGLAND. GREATER WEIX-BEING. An error in an article of his by which "first" was" written instead of "last" in a reference to a decade of the nineteenth century, thereby making the writer about a hundred and forty years old, prompts Mr. E. L. Woodward to make the following comments in "The Spectator":— Looking over these seven score years, what should I say? As a historian of times past, one can say very little; one stands too often in bewilderment between two illusions —the illusion that things change wliile men remain the same, and the other illusion which exaggerates the- rate of "natural selection" and supposes that human beings respond quickly to the incessant transformation of their environment. I can only guess what the memories of a hundred years would tell me; but I do not believe I should change overmuch the rough and ready judgment which comes from reading the history of more centuries than one. A judgment commonplace enough, though people are still inclined, romantically, or without sufficient knowledge, to pase other judgments . I should notice that there is greater well-being, that the sum of happiness is larger—if one may venture upon such a calculation; perhaps it would be better to say that the sum of preventable misery is less in England than it was a hundred years ago.

I should add that England is still not fully civilised —though, if one excludes France, Scandinavia, and Holland, it is hard to find countries as civilised. If I were asked to prove my case I would point to the children playing in any public park; the crowds coming away from a football match; the existence— such as it is—of the "dole." Compare these examples of to-day with pictures of a hundred years ago. I would explain that certain gross cruelties have disappeared; that one can forecast a day —one could not have done so a hundred years ago—when delicately nurtured people will think it barbarous to breed birds and beasts for the sport of killing them.

I should not talk of war, armaments, and high politics. Our failures here leap to the eye; but it would be absurd to damn politics and politicians because in a hundred years men have not abolished war or established political liberty. There was little enough "political liberty" in Europe in 1800, and only a handful of men thought about projects of perpetual peace. The change in opinion after a hundred and thirty years is in itself astonishing. In any case these things, the abolition of war, the establishment of liberty, may be nearer to us than wo believe. Who, in the troubled time of Cromwell, would have thought that religious toleration — do facto if not do jure—was so near to acceptance as an English maxim of State?