INTERESTING DEBATE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 236, 18 September 1936, Page 9

INTERESTING DEBATE

“Modern Civilisation is a Failure” HATUMA TEAM WINS From Our Own Correspondent. WAIPUKURAU, September 17. “That Modern Civilisation is a Failure” was the subject of a debate between the Waipukurau Toe H and the Hatuma Debating Society last evening. The Hatuma team (Messrs C. C. Bradshaw, G. Edgecombe, and Miss I. Thompson) took the affirmative, and Messrs C. R. Watson. K. Moore and B. Johansen represented Toe H. The judges were tho Rev. W. R. Hutchison and Mr C. M. Williamson. Colonel A. S. Wilder took the chair.

Mr Bradshaw opened the debate by reviewing the international situation, the impotence of the League of Nations in the Japanese-Chinese dispute, and the Abyssinian war. The disappearance of the ideal of disarmament, followed by an armament race instead, and the evidence of poverty in the midst of plenty —these things, he claimed, proved without doubt that modern civilisation was a failure.

M r C. B. Watson, opposing this, said the previous speaker had made the mistake of confining his remarks to the application of economies to present-day civilisation. Modern civilisation did not begin from 1914, nor was it confined to the Western World. To get a true perspective we must look back tot’ foundations of our civilisation, whi. he traced back to Palestine, and even Ethiopia, and from this to present day civilisation with the aid of Biblical history.

In concluson he said we had passed from the stage of man-eating and sorcery to an ago in which international boundaries were fast disappearing. It was typical of the progress of civilisation that the most civilised countries were not anxious to go to war, but were anxious only to protect their own territory. ART, MUSIC AND LITERATURE LOST. Mr Edgecombe said the new discoveries of science which might have helped mankind had been seized by industry to enable it to grasp temporalities instead of realities. We had lost all sense of art, music and literature, largely as a result of the radio and the cinema. Staring modern civilisation in the face was the tragedy of millions of starving people on the one hand, and the organised destruction of food on the other, in an effort to keep prices up, while the principle of the “dole” was rotten to the core. Mr Moore, in reply, claimed that the dissatisfaction which existed to-day was the result of our becoming more civilised and therefore better able to understand what wo were missing. Efforts to try and bring about world peace had been, and were being, made on a grander scale than eve r before. The League of Nations had succeeded in warding off many of the smaller wars which, had they developed, might have swept over Europe. We were now awakening to tho inherent evil of war. and' the fact that self fulfillment was essential to true happiness. UNWANTED CHILDREN A CRIME. Miss Thomson, condemning modern civilisation, likened the present time to “the calm before a storm,” analogous to that preceding the downfall of the Grecian and Homan civilisations. In this age of speed we had lost the art of meditation. The world was unable to rest and had forgotten God. One of our gravest crimes to-day was our refusal to grant children a place in our lives, the refusal of the privilege of motherhood. Civilisation was doomed, once its faith and belief were undermined by scepticism. Mr Johansen claimed that science had done, and was doing, much for the relief of disease, and that mankind had much more freedom now than in the past. War was but a passing phase in the progress of civilisation, and could not stop evolution. Radio was the means of spreading an appreciation of good music. Civilisation was the gift of a Supreme Being under whose guidance we must progress. Progression was a law governing science, nature, knowledge and civilisation. The judges declared the Hatuma team the winners with a score of 258 out of a possible 300, while the Toe H. team scored 246.