ARE WE BETTER THAN OUR FATHERS?

Marlborough Express, Volume XL, Issue 4, 5 January 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

ARE WE BETTER THAN OUR FATHERS?

In the Fortnightly Review Mr G. S. Street writes on the early Victorians and ourselves. He begins by saying there is a disposition to look down with- complacent contempt upon the early Victorians as though their age were a common synonym tor all that is unenlightened, narrowly conventional, and Philistine. He suggests that this, complacency and contempt are illplaced. He speaks of the forties and iifties and early sixties of the last century. The most characteristic note of that period was confidence and absence of misgivings and dubiety. .Nowadays almtfst every Conservative admits reforms are necessary. The Liberals are only confident about Free Trade. "The old Liberal spirit animating a whole party is dead." Reform on individualistic lines has reached its limit. Reform on Socialist lines is abhorrent to many authoritative and eminent Liberals. Liberals no longer applaud people struggling to beVfree, as did their fathers. Many even favour autocracy and pet the Tsar. The early Victorians looked on Australians and Americans as amusing and inferior people. Now the situations are reversed. Then morality was narrow, conventional; chastity counted for everything among women. Now — When women move about as beings with independent interests and tastes, either in an economically artificial society like the leisured and aristocratic classes, or in 3, society economically based on the individual, then sooner or later they are estimated, as are men; by their characters as a whole and not by one phase of their characters. \Ve are, he grants, broader in our views, religiously, ethically, critically. " 'iEstheticaHy we are nicer." iJiese advantages may, however, be rather the result of the energy and vitality of the past generation than to be placed to-the credit of the many ordinary intelligences of to-day. The writer welcomes the partial disappearance of the prudery or false refinement or early Victorian conversation. But he is not sure that in the deeper things or taste, in the appreciation of simple and profound facts of beauty., we are further than our fathers. % questions whether writers of a similar intellectual appeal to that of Garlvle or Browning would have been as widely and as heartily welcomed to-day, lne newspapers and general conversation to-day suggest to the writer that there is strangely little interest at present in any abstract or intellectual subject whatever. Conversation had more meaning once than it has now it intelligence be not wanting,to us, certainly zeal and energy are^'

In connection with the proposed utilisation of our magnificent water power, it will be remembered that in the report presented during the last session of Parliament reference wS made to some elaborate experiments ttWe^ bem S -ca"ied out in feweden. These experiments appear to have been successful, and a Stockholm say tLe IK, MaII Gaz^ says — For nearly 12 months now Fn <&* f U Y V?h6en in operation r»i£ " t° r Pla? in? the of the lailway system of the country under electric traction, and results have been obtained which some time- since induced the Government to take a decisive step At the well-known falfe of Gullspang there is now being built an £°2!3S el^ trici*y s.ta*<>n which It" 150 Onn th ° Producing not less than alonA t s6"^' Pis installation Seat iTW wiU famish a great proportion of tshe energy needed The cist fe Wh? le Ot- Central Sw6^. ihe cost of construction will be about fe milhon Swedish kroner, but British coalmasters should note that according to-the calculation of Infi-