PEOPLE “DOPED”

Evening Star, Issue 22629, 22 April 1937, Page 7

PEOPLE “DOPED”

PRICE OF CIVILISATION SYDNEY BISHOP’S INDICTMENT. “It is a mad world, and no wonder babies refuse to be born into it,” says the Bishop of Goulburn (Dr Burgmann),in his diocesan letter, in which he makes a scathing survey of world conditions, describing Europe as ‘ a suicide club.” Dr Burgmanri appeals to Australians to develop their own culture, and adds; “ Human folly piles up mountains of woe for the race. The butchered thousands of Addis Ababa cry to Heaven against the senseless brutality of the European. Europe i? supposed to be the-most enlightened spot on the earth, and Europe does these things. _ It' is no use any part of Europe trying : to escape its share of the responsibility. Europe has consistently pursued policies that periodically produce these outrages. It has never pursued a policy that deliberately sets o.ut to avoid them.

“ Europe,” lie adds, “ laments them for a little while after they happen, but they are felt to be part of the price that the race must pay for the supposed inestimable advantage of European culture and civilisation. We ourselves are part of that civilisation. So far wo have shown no capacity for standing on our own feet. We have no mind of our own; it could hardly be expected that in a century and a-half we could become fundamentally different from the culture from which we sprang, but the time has come for us to begin to grow a soul of our own. In the race to death vested interests will increase on every hand, and who will have courage to stop before disaster ensues? What drawer of dividends from mining or industrial shares, what recipient of salary, what wage-earner will face loss and perhaps the dole because his source of income might mean war and his own possible destruction to-morrow ?

“ Unless his morals are strong he will gamble on . the future. For the most part we ‘ dope ’ ourselves with sport and amusement and gambling; they enable ns to forget. They stop us from thinking about disagreeable things, and they aro more respectable than getting drunk. But they are a largescale dope ’ _ that keeps the vast majority of citizens from taking any intelligent interest in the urgent problems of present-day citizenship.”