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Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17741, 18 April 1923, Page 8

In a slashing attack tlie othor day on tho maternity bonus, tho Melbourne "Age" asked: "Are the efforts of the State, which means government in general, to be directed towards putting people in a position in which they can help themselves, or is tho public policy to be one of charity and individual decadence?" The whole problem was considered recently at an all-Australian conference of women, hut tho only definitely established facts were that the bonus had not increased the birth-rate, and had been shamefully abused. In the giving of ten people £5 apiece because one person is in ne<ed of £s—or even of the whole £50 —there is, of course, nothing but folly. But the "Ago" asks, "Why stop at maternity ?" If it is permissible for a man in good circumstances to. apply for a publio benevolence when his baby is born, why should others not put romance and honest affection aside, and apply for a grant to get married P Why should not all, "their ok-emosy/uiry avarice having grown by that on which it has been fed," claim funeral expenses for honoured parents, claiming this as a right because ''the poor old people did something in life for the benefit of tno country"? And the answer, of course, is that many soon would if tho spoonfeeders could get a long enough poriod in office to corrupt the rest of 'tho raoo.

Neither llicksoiiism nor psycho-analy-sis, neither Q.iito-siiEgasti&ii nor tho cult of Egyptian spirits nth ousts tho fads of modern intellectudisni. A number of men and women who are ueil known in literary oiroks in 'London —Algomon Blackwood. MiddJctan Many, A. 11. Orago, and. nth<,-rs—ar© ringing the changes at present on the injunction, to know themselves. l!>: r on Miss Kathleen Mansfield is reported; now to have spent tho laftt few woolro of hen- life aa a member of a uy?v cults which has its headquarter*) at Fontainobleau, and is presided over by a Greek called Gurdjieff and a Russian of tho name of Onepcnsky. Precisely what is taught or sought after it is r.ot oasy to say, but an account of 'the settlement in the London '-Daily News" s.iggesta a development of the- hody and $ thy emotions as a set-off to modern mffiv's excessive mentality. In a purely intellectual sense, it is claimed, there are hundreds and thousands of ?W- and women now who are as- clever as it is possible to be, and if tiioro wtvo nr; .further worlds to .'.ovqner, the- restwould be boredom and vacuity. &c< those new evangels are teaching ssiuotiiing which baa big name* and an r.hcsetue phraseology, but which does not to be much p.iojxs—soons, in fact, to bo very much less —thai: linrr.a and Shelley and Coleridge aud 'Wordsworth. taught when they rtfdled poetry hack t? Nature.