NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18965, 12 March 1925, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MODERN Vnrril REBUKED. It, has for some years been a popular axiom that everything which is wrong with the world is the fault of the, old people, says the London Daily 1 olograph. Every reformer with an ambition to construct a new heaven and a new earth lias called upon youth to renounce the, follies of its grandfathers and grandmothers and, rely upon its own superior genius. the members of the Student, Christian Movement, in conference at Manchester, were startled by the suggestion " that the modern youth is really the most conceited tiling thai ever was produced." The Rev. Garfield Williams is prepared to be categorical in his indictment. He finds that the modern student is ridiculous in his choice of. books. Unless a tome bears the date of this year or last ingenuous youth considers it, obsolete. Mr. Garfield Williams was moved to make the very unfashionable remark that, " as a matter of fact, almost all the books that arc worth reading are books that were not published in the twentieth century." It may be true; base, mathematical arguments strongly suggest that it, is true. Men have been writing books for some thousands of years; we must therefore consider it probable that the viiot majority of good books in existence weio written' before 1900. Mr. Williams went on to rend the, young people for believing that nothing good can come out of the Victorian Age. "The real truth of the matter is," he said, most unkindly, " that if you do about, ijio-tenth as well as your fathers did in the Victorian Age you will do uncommonly well," TAXATION IN' FRANCE. "I have been spending some weeks in Eranee, talking whenever 1 can to I' rench people, and every day reading a bundle of French newspapers," writes Mr. .1, A. Spender in the Weekly Westminster. lho impression 1 bring back is thai I?ranee is very uneasy and depressed. Everyone complains of the taxes, and not only of their amount, hut. of their vexatious and arbitrary character. Failing a productive income tax, successive Administrations have been cudgelling their brains to find new sources of revenue, and nothing seems to have escaped them. Ihe stories one, hears from shopkeepers and countryfolk remind one of England in the, days of Cobbett, and there is much the same bitterness against tax-collectors and 'taxeaters.' In about four weeks 1 have paid nearly a thousand francs in taxes on my hotel bills and levee de sejour, and my French friends tell me that, owing to the influence of the hotelkeepers, the foreigner gets off cheap. There is a general agreement that the limit has been reached, and, failing a really effective income tax on the British model, I should think that is the truth. It can be. proved to demonstration that the taxation per head is much lower in France than in j England, but the number and variety of ! the. taxes make them seem crushing to the average, Frenchman, and what the rich gain by escaping taxes on their wealth they much more than lose by the depreciation of the franc and the accompanying shrinkage of capita! values, and when the Americans cotno along and say they want to bo paid, it seems the last straw." THE COUNTRY PARSON. "This year wo commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Charles Kingsley, who was a ripe scholar and a famous man of letters, and a brilliant and courageous controversialist but, above and before all things, a devoted country parson," says the Morning Post. '■Vet. if he could tell us his innermost thought to-day, we feel sure Kingsley would ask to be remembered as a country parson rather than as historian, controversialist, or man of letters. At Jvversley he lived happily as servos servoruiu Dei, using all his various gifts for the enhancement, of his high oflico and the good of his flock. He had two qualities which are more often found, wo believe, in country parsons than in any other class of men. He was able to think and teach with that divine eommonsense which runs like a golden thread through tho sermons of all the great English preachers, who were neither platitudinarian nor latitudinarian nor attitudinarian. And he was a sportsman among sportsmen. And to day, for the glory of CJod, the land is full of such many-sided singlehearted country parsons, each a pillar of sane, sound religion, and a prop of true neighbourliness in his quiet sphere far from the hurry and uproar of the great cities. It is still true to say, to take bill, one example, that good scholarship is to bo found in (lie rectories of England as surely as in the ancient Universities. Though little is heard of htm and his life is now a sad struggle with penury, tin' country parson is still a scholar and a divine and a sportsman, and the surest prop and stay of right living." THE BRITISH STOCK. " As an Englishman I am concerned with the English race and the well-being of the British Empire, and so far as I can judge tho failure of the English race and Empire would fie a grave disaster," writes the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. A. C. Headlam. who has been in both Canada and Australia, in a letter to the Times. He examines at length the position in Canada, pointing out, I bat tin; French population amounts to 27 per cent, of the whole, and that in spite of a very considerable immigration in the bust ten years, the English population lias barely held its own. Unless the new immigrants are more fertile than the older British population, as soon as ever immigration, ceases, the same process will speedily take place in the rest of Canada as has done in Quebec. He concludes with a striking observation regarding the character of emigration from Britain to the Dominions: "The modern idea that education can transform the children of inferior stock is mistaken. If we send to Canada or Australia 100,000 immigrants, it is not right that they should nil be of the working classes, or that we should expect those countries, where civilisation is still only partially organised, to take the whole burden of their education. There is always a tendency under the influence of education and luxury for the fertility of the human race to decrease. This is intensified at the present time by unwise legislation, which intensifies the natural tendency, and by the modern teaching of birth control, which leads to a restriction of the birth rate in those who are most fitted to survive. I see no rea.son for doubting that, unless the present tendencies are corrected, tho result will be disastrous to the English race and the English Empire. The correction may perhaps come best, bv a recognition of our Christian duty, of care for the wellbeing of tho race, as well as for that of society."