CULT OF PLEASURE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 130, 26 February 1929, Page 12

CULT OF PLEASURE

APATHY IN CIVIC AFFAIRS “FUTURE FRAUGHT WITH TROUBLE” Dominion Special Service. Auckland, February 25.

Public apathy in civic affairs was deplored by Mr. W. J. Holdsworth, chairman of the Auckland Power Board, in addressing the Rotary Club on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Rotary movement. In a speech that emphasised the practical applications of citizenship, the speaker expressed the view that sport and recreation, while having their rightful place in the community, had no right to dominate the interests of the people to the exclusion of everything else. The scholar, Sir Ernest Rutherford, would survive in history the boxer, Tom Heeney.

“Signs are not wanting, that unless the people throw oft their apathy and indifference and take a live interest in civic matters, the future is fraught with trouble,” said Mr. Holdsworth. “In every walk of life men are striving and making a supreme sacrifice to add to the sum of human knowledge. Yet, in national and local politics, we, as a community, are marking time, and this mainly through a lack of interest on the part of the people. It has been rightly said that the individual responsibility for good government of a country ought to be learned at every mother’s knee, taught daily in the schools, preached continually from the pulpit, and proclaimed everywhere by the Press. There is not the slightest doubt we are living in a pleasureloving age. Recreation and sport have their rightful place in our life and in the community, but they have no right to dominate and take first place to the exclusion of everything else.”

People seemed, in fact, to be in danger of losing their sense of proportion. The defeat of the All Blacks and the failure of Tom Heeney were regarded in the light of .national calamities, but the speaker ventured to say that when Heeney was forgotten the name of Sir Ernest Rutherford, who had placed New Zealand on the map of science,would live in the annals of her history. It was a lamentable fact, that while prize-fighters were receiving purses running into five figures, two young English doctors, devoting their lives to cancer research, committed suicide because they could not face poverty.