MORAL STANDARDS TO-DAY.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 11

MORAL STANDARDS TO-DAY.

to the suitor ov Tgs pais-. Sir,—l should not like the statement of uiy "virtually admitting the decadence in the morals of to-day" to pass without a word of comment., i pointed out the obvious fact that the oid reUgious motiv* for individual and social behaviour tiad«' not survived the disintegrating contact with organised human knowledge and that as a result many a youth is now witfcout a clear purpose in life. 'the nonsurvival of such a motive showed its unsatisfactory nature. It was too largely a matter of inherited bcuet and of dogmatic sanctions, too little a matter of sound reasoning based on experience. We nien are faced with thrco duties: a duty to ourselves; a duty to other living beings; iind a duty to God, i.e., the cosmos as a whole. 'Hie older generations separated too much the answers to these three questions. The new generation will probahly answer all three in almost exactly the same way, One need not fear the result. Man is essentially a sccifil being When one takes long enough views, one tan see "every winter slowly turning to sprmg." Let us who failed to give the young any motive to replace the religious one we ourselves could no longer accept from our fathers view with patience ana hope the efforts of the young to work out a new moral standard for the race. Let us particularly beware of too many words connoting blame, and so perchance revealing our own narrow outlook.■ Just as at the Disarmament Conference it was not the great Christian nations who were ready to lav the foundation of pence in complete disarmament, but the 'atheistic Bolsheviks and "unspeakable' Juris, so it may be (and 1 believe it wiU be) the "decadent" youth of the present who will blaze a way to fairer moral standards than we older one* know. Fnith in the younp; is th? most precious faith we can possess.— > ours, etC " N. M. BELL. August 12th, 1932. i -, ——-