LOVED “DEAD WOOD DICK” NOVELS

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 3 January 1931, Page 16

LOVED “DEAD WOOD DICK” NOVELS

J AM sure that when I was a little boy if 1 had been told not to read Deadwood Dick I would have read far more than I did. As it was I read a lot of them ,and they did not do me very much harm. This was the confession of Prof. A. E. Heath, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Whiles, to the British Social Hygiene Council summer school at Welwyn.

Professor Heath also told how, in recent travels abroad, he always parted from tradespeople and porters with polite mutual bows. When he returned he bowed to the porter at Liverpool >Stroot, and the man was dumbfounded. Professor Heath also spoke ori social changes. “Men often invent rational grounds for the changes ultimately. Short s-kirts, for example, arc clearly, for greater freedom of movement, and so on.

“Clearly some reason will be invented for their increasing length. (Laughter.) I can. already see one coming from economics.

“I know of no quicker way of destroying civilisation, ' ’ continued Professor Heath, “than the way w'c have at present of turning out our young folk without anything to do. “When. I was at Liverpool University I directed a scheme of prison edu-

Professor Makes Confession

cation. One day 1 took a class of about 45 young folk, who should not have been in prison at all—from 17 to 1 18 years of age. i “T talked about skill, and in the discussion a boy asked: ‘What is the use of telling us about skill when there isn’t one of us who has ever had the chance of a decent job since he left school? ’

“Quite frankly, I value much more any man who gets into trouble with the police than the one who drifts about doing nothing. I would sooner have them bad than dead.’’

Professor Heath, speaking of falling in love, said:

“When people fall in love the man may desire his beloved to hold fiis own political opinion and religious views, and have his own social accomplishments and no others. “But, of course, if he has been badly bitten lie will have a series of shocks, because he will discover—and in my opinion he is .more likely to fall really in love if he does discover—that this other person has a life all its own, which you can never really enter into, and with qualities which cannot be changed.

“Married love is therefore not the dull thing that the moralists will so often insist on, but a series of adventures. ’ ’