NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21251, 3 August 1932, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SECULARIST CHALLENGE Preaching at St. Margaret's, Westminster, tho Bishop of Durham, Dr. Henson, said we were living in the first stages of a. great revolt against the Christian elements in Western civilisation. The fundamental ideas upon which rested the entire fabric of civilisation as it had been developed in Christianity were challenged, denied, and scornfully assailed. " Shall civilisation remain in any sense Christian ?" was the question which was everywhere being raised within Christendom. It had been brutally answered in the negative in Russia. The uprooting process was already far advanced among ourselves. Yet there were facts which might stir the anxiety of even the most confident advocates of secularism, for the repudiation of the Christian tradition did not bring happiness to tho world. Asking what was meant by putting in contrast and conflict the Christ of criticism and the Christ of tradition, the Bishop said they could not live on negation or proclaim a gospel of doubt. Men were saved by faith and not by questions. The challenge was not only by Secularists without the Church, but by Modernists within it. With Modernist translations of the Gospel that carried no messago of redemption and opened no vistas of eternal hope, no compromise could be made. MENTAL DEFECTIVES The suggestion that sterilisation of mental defectives would lead to a marked fall in the incidence of mental deficiency is contested in the report of the British Medical Association Committee on Mental Deficiency, published in the British Medical Journal. The issue of the report coincided with the first meeting of the Committee on the Sterilisation of the Unfit set up by the Ministry of Health. It is certain, states the committee, that there are large numbers of "carriers" of mental deficiency at large in every civilised community. Since these appear normal to their fellows, it is not practicable to suggest that they should be sterilised. In the present state of knowledge, the committee considers, sterilisation, even widely applied to certifiable mental defectives, would cause no appreciable difference in the number of defectives for j

many generations. Nevertheless, it agrees that sterilisation might be desirable for the small number of mental defectives in respect of whom the chief social clanger is propagation, and who, were this danger removed, could live in the community. Sterilisation, if adopted, should be restricted to suitable cases, and should not bo used to secure the discharge from institutions of those who need institutional care. PLAINS OR THE HILLS Speaking at Kingswood School on Founders' Day, Lord Goschen said that those who were growing up had to recollect that there had been a generation wiped out. Travelling in various parts of the Commonwealth, he had realised to the full how serious that gap was, and also that it was for the growing generation to fill it. Upon it, therefore, a double responsibility was placed. Roughly, there were two classes—those who thought of " safety first!" and those who looked on life as a great adventure. The first class were good people, honourable people, leading good lives, doing the work they had been appointed to do well and with all their might. But there was one thing they lacked—vision. Let them remember that " where there is no vision the people porish." The second class had vision. They seized hold ot life; they were determined to make something of it, to dare, to strive and to struggle. The first class led their lives in the plains. To them the hills were shrouded in mist. Those others saw the radiant hilltops beckoning to them; they advanced and climbed up to the ideals which were calling' them. It was to the second class that the men belonged who had gone out to make this Empire. THE " INDUSTRIAL INVALID " In his report, Dr. Bridge, the senior medical inspector of factories in Britain, calls attention to the beneficial effects of manual work on mind and body, and cm-

phasises the importance of maintaining interest in work. He describes the uninterested' worker us an industrial invalid. "It is true," lie says, h:it the pleasure of the craftsman is being crushed by lite

steady increase in mechanical processes, (hp, result of which is seen in the tendency to rise of sickness rates for 'nervous* disabilities' (for want of a better name). Repetition processes undoubtedly

create a weariness nut expressed in physical terms, but in a desire by- the worker for temporary relief from the enforced boredom of occupation in which tho inind is left partially or entirely unoccupied. This fact mast be recognised for the understanding of sickness records mul absenteeism in tho industrial population. Vastly more days arc lost from vague, ill-defined, but no doubt very real, disability duo to ennui than from all the recognised industrial diseases together. How this state of affairs is to be controlled it, a, pressing problem of industrial health at this time. More interest in processes that are themselves dull must bo created. Selection of workers is in this problem of only limited valuo; there are 111010 dull tasks than people suitable for them. Industrial management may solve tho difficulty— piceo for time rates, a system of promotion on efficiency, bonuses of holidays for unbroken timekeeping, rest periods with a change of posture and attention, are but a few suggestions in a problem which is a growing one. Tho uninterested worker is an industrial invalid. Interest, in work leads to industrial good health."