"SAME HERE"!

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 19

"SAME HERE"!

."Lack .of courtesy in, the individual is regrettable, but, when exhibited in bulk it is lamentable. I mention this instance without any desire to be unfair to cither parents or schoolmasters, though I am convinced that blame attaches to 0110 or the other, and possibly to both, says a correspondent of tlie 'London "Daily Telegraph." Travelling citywards from a ■western suburb in a district train 1 f"ound myself in a compartment crowded with schoolboys whose dress and school caps with badges indicated that they weer the soub of well-circumstanced parents. Their ages ranged,from, say, 10 to 15 or 16. These boys occupied.fully livesixths of' the seats.. The other, passengers were men and women of various ages,,, many of them, between 50 and 70. At each stopping-place more passengers entered and strap-hanging was necessary. Yet Jibt a single one of these young, healthy lads offered a place to any elderly person, man or woman. Remembering that boys were taught in my childhood days always to consider the comfort of those older than themselves, I was much impressed, and sadly, 'with this exhibition of decadence. "Nobody can have failed to observe' sirieethe war a .general tendency even in menfolk to neglect the claims of women and the frailer of their own sex in crowded public vehicles. Many hoped arid believed it was an attitude which" would' soon disappear. But

judging from the untiioughtful conduct of these youngsters I am bound to admit that there appears to be little prospect of the old-fashioned courtesy reappearing in our time. Neither the parents nor. the tutors of these boys could have felt satisfied had. they witnessed what I have described. Possibly the teaching, of. courtesy and unselfishness, forms no part of the curriculum of modern schools, and I' am driven to think it cannot be very widely practised by fathers and mother*.