ROTARY.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19217, 25 January 1928, Page 8

ROTARY.

A CANDID FRIEND.

WHAT THE "MAN IN THE STREET" THINKS.

[THE FBESS Special Service] AUCKLAND, January 24. Rolarians at their luncheon yesterday heard some candid criticism of themselves —so candid, indeed, that they must have been astonished. Mr Julius iiogben, who claimed to be acting as loud speaker lor the man in the street, alter he had made his speech, bade "Good-bye to all the Rotarians who were previously my friends."

According to the "Man in th*. Street," said Mr Hogben, Rotarians always agreed with all their speakers. They cheered Mr Amery to the echo when he spoke of Empire trade, and then went back to business and sold Japanese and German goods, because there was more profit in them. Announcing himself as tho "Loud Speaker for the Man in-the Street," Mr Hogben said this same garrulous person had decided that loud speaking was one of the first qualifications for Rotary. The address would not add to the human qualities of self-reverence which Rotarians were supposed to have in big proportions, but it would try their quality of self-control. The worst would be first. The Man in the Street believed that Rotary was really a modem fallacy, and having made up his mind he looked round for facts to support it. First, there was the motto of "Service Above Self," which the man thought was an inverse interpretation of "Self before Service," and that Eotarians lived up to it fully. If the motto really means "Service before Self," then the service was not too far "before." The public idea was that a man who wished to serve did not broadcast it from tho housetops, but hid his light under a bushel. The inclusion of "self" in any motto invited emphasis on that word. The Man in the Street did not know the second half of slogan, "He profits best who serves best." "But," said Mr Hogben, "I bet he wishes he did." "Rotary is an organisation to make the world safe for American commercial traveilers," said the Loud Speaker, "and its only object is purely a commercial one. The man says that a protest of morality makes the public buy more and that self-interest is confounded with righteousness. He believed that Rotarians sat down among their money bags and dictated their principles to others. Rotary was unlike charity, in that it exalted and puffed itself up. The Man in the Street wanted to see more evidence of altruism than a Christmas tree once a year. "Rotary seems to bo a club more exclusive than the Ark, because that institution had at least two of every kind of animal," continued the speaker. "The Man in the Street" says that Rotary is a Yankee produce from the Land of Liberty and Prohibition, world peace and Jargor navies, moving pictures and happy divorces. "We owe America many of the amenities of civilisation, the phonograph and seedless raisins, the Charleston, the Blackbottom. and Rotary, and the greatest of these is the phonograph, although Rotary makes a very good second." An organisation to force good fellowship was foreign to the British nation, he continued. There was actually singing at the meetings. "A R<£ tarian told me it was part-singing, said Mr Hogben. "I am willing to agree that part of it may be singing. 1 wonder if any of you have stood off and listened to it?" The calling of members by "pet" names was a practice rarely met with outside the age of ten years. Boys rarely did it at school, except with the object of derision. The speaker could not imagine himself calling old and respected men by their Christian names. "This may be said in defence of Uotary, that jou do not wear paper hats," he continued, "and that-while you are engaged in a childish occupation here you keep out of other mischief." Speaking for himself Mr Hogben said, "By request, no flowers." There was great applause when the president, Mr W. J. Holdsworth, thanking Mr Hogben, said that the secretary had been fight in going to the Law Society for a "Loud Speaker." Mr Holdsworth hoped that he might be given the opportunity of telling the Law Society what the "Man in the Street" thought about that institution. (Laughter.)