OUR IMPROVING MANNERS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3136, 25 September 1922, Page 7

OUR IMPROVING MANNERS.

(By Cicely Hamilton.) Perhaps one of the most hopeful signs of the present clay is the fact that our manners to our fellow-citizens tire rapidly ami visibly improving; that in streets, in shops, and on railway platforms we are getting back to something I'ke the standard of pro-war politeness. , The assistant who supplies us with groceries or garments is no longer openly unwilling; the passenger astray in a London terminus may ask for direction without fear of a sulky reply, and the blessed improvement is not confined to England: a traveller recently returned from France found porters as friendly as in days gone by, and officials less surly than of late; the lit of collective had temper which attacked a nervouslyexhausted, world would seem to be wearing itself out. We are returning (thank heaven!) to what used to be our normal friendliness; we no longer trail out coats for anyone to tread on or dislike our fel-low-crcatures on sight. The change means more, and a good deal more, than increase of comfort and the general sweetening of existrn-e; it beta kens the reasonable attitude of mind which makes peace between men—and even between nations —sunn (hmg more than a far possibility. Without that reasonable attitude ol mind agreements and arrangements, industrial or national, will always work badlv and crumble; the historian of the future will probably point out that the troubles of the world in Ihe post-war davs were largely due to the fact that its' peoples, one and all. were uncommonly snappish and bad-tempered. If the Treaty of Versailles had been ■drawn up bv archangels sitting in conclave, it is doubtful if its provisions would have afforded anything hut dissatisfaction to the millions of thoroughly disgruntled pevsom who were finding a species of bitter enjoyment in pushing each other off the steps of buses and snarling at each other in shops. People who find pleasure in annoying their neighbors will never be satisfied with anything. The League of Nations might do very much worse than institute a thorough and scientific inquiry into the cause and cure of our fits of general bad temper —the common sulkiness or common snappishness. that (coiitniry to generaly received opinion) is not always the result of a grievance that is real and actual. It is not the downtrodden, the hopelessly unfortunate, who are readiest at the picking of a quarrel; trade unionists were never more willing to strike than in the day of exceptional prosperity—their common bad temper was not nearly so vehement in times when their grievances were greater.