THE NATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21180, 2 June 1934, Page 11

THE NATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

TO THE EDITOR OF TUB TREhS. Sir, —In your "Contentions" space in your issue of last Saturday is an article by Professor Salmond, affirming "that the nation, not the individual, is the enemy of mankind." In opening the matter, he describes this as a paradox. The premise is that the moral level of t]ie government of a country is lower than that of the people that supports it. Now, no paradox exists, and the moral level of i the individual is no higher than that of the government which secures his support. With the individual, he is under the restraint of the law. which punishes certain moral delinquencies, and also he is restrained from transgression by the opinion of others. Our ideal of morality is higher than our practice, and when an individual "falls from grace" under temptation, we reprobate his atcion, while we, under similar conditions, might do the same, or, if the temptation which led to his fall does not seduce us, we may yield to another, which would not seduce him. With the government these restraints are withdrawn, and the government, i.e., those whom we j have chosen or support as otir repre-, sentatives reflect the actual level of j morality of ourselves. The cowardice and ignorance displayed by our! own Government of to-day is in true j measure the cowardice and ignorance of those (myself among them) I who placed them where they are. j Let me digress here. We have 00,000 unemployed leaving out. wastrels; | these, if employed in wealth pruduc-, lion. will each return interest on £IOOO. Each man, regarded in money | terms, has a value of £IOOO, which 1 equals £80,000,000. Further, our unein-1 ployed fund of £5,000,000 annually raised bv taxation, equals 5 per cent.' on £100,000,000. Our level of iutel- j ligence is not very high, as the way. is quite plain, if we choose to take it. , Now to return, the article raises, the question, may not Bernard Shaw, ' with his quickness of perception ami ' love of truth, have correctly si/.ed up! the local university in his '"snobbish-; esure"; there are other forms of snob- 1 berv besides the social one, and self- i righteousness is one of them. Pro- ! fossor Salmond, with his smug as- j sumption of a higher level of morality i than others, lays himself open to a I charge of being guilty of thisjbform i l f snobbery. The university is disappointing: it j should be the centre, whence the light I of learning, emanating from the minds I of profound men, will shed its rays on I the path of the people; yet in the. public utterances of the men to whom , we attribute this profundity we hear! no more than can be heard at the! street corner, in a short conversation ! with a passing friend. Our troubles: just now arc economic, but since they ' first became acute we have had no ( light thrown oi\ the position by the] men of the economic section of the \ university, either as to the causes or cure. Such productions as the bulletins issued by the Chamber of Commerce, and arranged for it at Canterbury College, are merely wordy nothings. and quite valueless. There; should be something better than this | emanating from an institution with the pretentious title of a university,' i.e., a scat of learning. If the "univer-j sity" is no more than an extension j of our system of primary education, i intended only to provide the pupils 1 with the necessary equipment for ac-1 quiring knowledge, and not calculating to extend the limit of their intellect by coming into contact with superior minds, with the effect, of strengthening and broadening them, as do the great universities abroad, then there is no more to be said, except that all pretence of being more should cease, hi saying what I have, I except the technical side, engineering, law, medicine, etc. These schools probably arc ! efficient.—Yours, etc., GEO. SAGE. ! Governor's Bay, June 1. 1031. I