NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21639, 3 November 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE ART OF LEISURE In these days educationists have come to realise that one of tho most important aims of any sound educational system is to encourage the wise employment of leisure, says the Morning Post. l'"or, as the old rhyme tells us, "Satan will find mischief still for idle hands to do." Leisure, which originally signified opportunity to do something specific or implied, lias come to mean a temporary freedom from what, we call our "occupations" or "employments." In this narrower sense, it implies that each of us is engaged with one special thing in life, and from it seeks escape through that which we term "leisure." It is true that for most there is this obligatory activity, under pressure of the need to find the means of subsistence; and as the pressure grows more and more insistent, the longing for leisure becomes more impatient. In fact, it may be said to vary inversely with the opportunities. Our sport, our art, our recreations, the theatre, the cinema, are bids for release from an occupation which obsesses. Rut how many organise their leisure, though the whole art of leisure is the achievement of a proper poise between immediate) and binding pursuits and others more remote, but not less essential? "Knocking off" work is not necessarily leisure, yet a wise loafing may be its secret. Has not the poet said: That, we cnri fpfl this mind of rrnra In a wise pasfivrness ? MEMORY OF BRADLAUGH At a centenary celebration in London Lord Horder proposed "The Memory of Charles Bradlangh and his services In the cause of religious, political, and social reform." He said that Bradlaugh's handling of birth control issues loft scarcely anything to add oven after 50 years of frequent debate ' and added experience. By clear thinking and lucid expression Bradlangh made great contributions to the subject. What had been done since then? The Manchester police in December, 1930, seized copies of a book called "Parenthood" with intent to prosecute the author and publisher. It was written by a competent London doctor, and the review which stated that the book should meet the need for a good practical handbook on birth control with reliable data was quite a fair critique on the publication. It was no use blaming tho law for these tilings. Tho process of the law made possible all legal anachronisms given sufficient stupidity on the part of the citizens who actuated those processes. What an unconscionable time the spirit of antagonism which faced birth control took in dying! Only three years ago no one could obtain any advice on contraception at any maternity centre or hospital in tho country which was in part or wholly State-aided. After considerable pressure, and faced with the terrible problem of maternal mortality, which was still rising and was now over 3000 a year, tho Ministry of Health sanctioned the giving of such advice, but only sanctioned it in the case of women suffering from organic disease and wliero child-bearing was likely to endanger life. Tho dissemination of that knowledge to the industrial classes, which Bradlangh rightly considered to be essential, was still denied, though that knowledge was open to the well-to-do and educated. FALLING BIRTH RATE "The birth rate in Northern and West Central Europe." writes Dr. L. Hersch, of the University of Geneva, in the International Tiibour Review, "is all but the same as the death rate, and it would seem that it will shortly fall below it; in other words, the excess of births over deaths is now on the point of vanishing, and may even become a negative quantity. And. as already indicated in other Western countries, the same course is being followed at more or loss distance, but at a more headlong pace in the case of the latest comers. Western populations more and more tend to be stationary ; some of thorn have all but reached this slate at the present time, and it appears that they may soon actually begin to decrease. When this development is transferred from the purely demographic to tho economic sphere certain consequences are bound to follow. It involves a diminution of consumers in the population in relation to producers. For that part of the population which is economically active consists almost entirely of young and mature adults, while children nearly all belong to the economically passive part, of the population. Consequently, the systematic diminution of the proportion of children permanently reduces that section of the population which is composed of consumers only. Jt is true that tit tho samo time the proportion of elderly people increases, but, from the nature of the case the two proportions are of quite different orders of magnitude and tho increase of the elderly section of the population is far from making up for the lessened number of children. This steady decrease of the consuming population in relation to the producing population must, all other things being eriual. bring about growing unonipl/iymont, unemployment that is neither seasonal nor cyclical, but may be suitably described as 'structural,' since it is determined by the structure of tho population bv ago."