HOME LIFE ESSENTIAL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 131, 27 February 1937, Page 23

HOME LIFE ESSENTIAL

Pivot Of Progress In World To-day

••TITOME life is an absolute necessity to huinanity, lor, alter all, it is the bedrock of progress, and progress springs Irani where thought grows quietly and emotion develops character. In an exclusive interview with the “Sydney Morning Herald, Dame Maiy Gilmore made this remark when discussing life as she sees it to-day. Mis. Gilmore has had conferred on her the title of Dame Commandet o the Order of the British Empire. The keywords of hundreds of congratulatory telegrams and letters were “well deserved.

Knlarging her remarks concerning the home, Dame Mary Gilmore continued.

“We seem to be on the crest of a wave of transition as regards life, especially domestic life. “Industrial conditions have forced women out of the home to compete in a world that has more regard for the

oiling and smooth running of machinery than for the touch of a baby’s hand or the laughter of children as they play. More and more, play is being eliminated from life, and yet, of all things, play is the most necessary thing' to the development of mind .and body. I don’t mean organised play as in schools, but as children play at home, whether in backyard or front garden. “Natural play is to the child what thought is to the brain of the adult. If people only realised it, child’s play is a constant exploration when it isn’t dramatisation. It means either a new world to children or a new dramatisation of self or of life, and either is an outlet and a reaching out. Every game is an adventure whether it is hide-and-seek, with boys and girls playing together, or girls alone, playing ladies and tea-parties. “Home is as natural to humanity as a nest is to a bird, and after we have

shed Ihe chrysalis form Hint is ours in this transition stage, life "'ill come back again to some form of domesticity and family life, even if. as in Germany, by seml-compulsion (which I hope not!)” Dame Mary Gilmore added tliut Hie world was, she considered, returning to thought.

“In the picture world, for instance,” she said, "we can already see it. Tim sensational cannot go on unlimitedly. To reach sensation after sensation in competition with others means increasing costs, and at last there o’Omes a time when even money says, ‘Halt, as it cannot be further spent profitably. “Sensation is only valuable while it stimulates. In the end, satiety comes, and by tiiat means it drives people back to what is intellectual: for thought ami emotion are. after all. the righthand and the left of that higher complexity which governs I lie physical, and is man.”