Social Problems

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 51, 24 November 1930, Page 13

Social Problems

Sir.—l am rather loath to trespass once igain upon your valuable space, but when Mr. A. G. Butchers (the author of Education in - New Zealand ) asks, What had the men of New Zealand to say about it?” I feel that to be a challenge which I can hardly pass by. • No one has striven harder than I have done, during the past eight years, to awaken the public conscience to the realities of New Zealand’s many social problems; the rapid increase in our hospital population; the incidence steadily mounting- year by year in venereal disease ; the shameful scandal of the illegitimate” death rate, and the crying need for a nation-wide education of young and old alike. My letters to newspapers upon these subjects have been published throughout the land, and in making a computation from my scrap book, I find that no fewer than 120 letters have been .published through my authorship. As for statistics, I have “swatted" and quoted them from the Year Book to such an extent that oftentimes my hand has become “all asleep” with the effort. And now, as I write this, I am wondering rather whimsically whether Mr. Butchers has ever seen one of my letters; or just how many other men and women in New Zealand can recall a single one of them to mind. 1 have often thought of the possibility of having all these letters republished in book form, but the difficulties are so great that I do not see a possible hope of that ever being done. And yet, I must say in my own defence, that in the midst of all the outcryings over our social problems, I am the only one who has put forward any practical, suggestion to meet them by education. That proposal is: “The foundation of a strong New Zealand Humanist Society to undertake the necessary education. Such society to act upon the humanist motto, ‘Cure by prevention ; prevent by education.’ ” And hi this proposal, it does seem to me to meet with the same objective as Mr. Butchers’s book; and to put that objective upon a sound practicaal basis. So here is one “mere man” who has not only had a good deal to say, but wdio has anticipated Mr. Butchers by quite a few years. . Thanking you, Sir,/for the kind courtesy you have always accorded my. efforts. —I am?- etc., R. M. THOMSON. Auckland, November 19.