NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21743, 7 March 1934, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

MENTAL DEFECTIVES A statement of ''Objections, to a Permissire Bill to Legalise the Voluntary Sterilisation of Certain Mental Defectives " has been published by the Westminster Catholic Federation. Tt is declared that such a bill would sanction unjustifiable mutilation as an artificial measure for preventing procreation, and that it would be the inception of a practice which would inevitably be extended if the principle were once admitted. Sterilisation, as with any other surgical operation, it is stated, may be lawful for the physical health of the individual, but for no other reason, except perhaps as a punishment legally inflicted on guilty persons. The proponents of the bill desire to avoid, so far as possible, religions and moral issues, but the question is essentially a moral one and the moral law must be taken into account. A sterilisation law, the statement concludes, is not wanted by the English people,, and there is no adequate reason why Parliament should be influenced by tentative legislation in a few other places or by the agitation in this country of a few extremists who greatly exaggerate the beneficial effects of sterilisation.

SPIRITUAL CONTACT At a dinner of the Public Schools Exploring Society, General Sir lan Hamilton emphasised the value and importance of travel and exploration, and commended the objects and work of the society. The reason he was so specially in sympathy with the society was because, having held the appointment of Inspector-General of Overseas Forces for four years, he had visited nearly every corner of the globe—small detachments of volunteers dotted down the Yangtze Kyang River, Tasmania, the island of Vancouver, on the West, and practically every other place. He knew, therefore, that even in' these days of cinema, they could not establish spiritual contact without physical contact. Schemes to establish personal contact were not only meritorious, but essential, if the Empire were to live. Most unfortunately, at a moment when the War Office must have lose ita head, the post of Inspector-General of Overseas Forces was done away with. The post- was vital. There was no need for it to be held by a Britisher. Jan Smuts would have made a fine Inspector-Gen-eral; if an Australian were wanted, that gallant Gallipoli veteran. General Monash, would have filled the bill; NewZealand, Sir Andrew Russell; Canada, Curry. Aeroplanes, tanks and mechanisation generally might lead them only into confusion unless some uniformity of spirit and doctrine were brought about by frequent persona! contacts.

UNEMPLOYMENT EVILS On behalf of the members of a private conference, the Archbishop of York has issued a manifesto on unemployment, from which the following passages are extracted:—TTnemployj ment is more than a misfortune for | those who are overtaken by it; it is | a curse. Those who are not brought | into intimate association with the un- ; employed often suppose that its chief : evil consists in the state of physical | want which it involves. -That truly is bad enough. But men can face physical hardship, even when it afflicts their wives and children as well as "themselves, if they feel that they are serving some cause by enduring it. What saps a man's moral strength and fills him with depression, and often with bitterness, is not the physical want; it is the sense that society has no need of him, no use for him. Thus unemployment is both an affront and a corrosive poison to his personality. And for the infliction of that insult and injury we are all guilty so far as we acquiesce in an ordering of life which has this consequence,. Yet it must be recognised that "unemployment'' is a permanent element in our present social and industrial order. Its prevalence to-day has forced it upon public attention; but in the decade before the war the average number of unemployed iin Great Britain was not far short of 1,000.000 —representing a vast amount of human need and of social opportunity. Many | believe that the amount of "unemployment" is likely to increase rather than diminish, as machinery displaces human labour; others expect that the labour thus displaced will in the long run be reabsorbed. The point we wish to emphasise at the outset. i 3 that, ! whichever view we adopt on ' this j question, we must, in the light of long j experience, expect that there will be a j volume of "unemployment" calling for j carefully planned action.

CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE Christians cannot be conlient with the present manifestly unjust incidence of reduction in the demand for human labour, whether caused by the introduction of machinery or by general trade depression, states the Archbishop of York in his manifesto. The community is at fault in permitting the effects of such changes to fa>ll so unequally as to turn some of its members into a class apart—the unemployed. The '"dole'' is in part a recognition of, and in part a compensation for, this injury. But the greater part of the injury cannot be so remedied, for it consists in the isolation and separation from the community which is bound to go with inability to employ one*3 self in any way recognised by society as valuable. . . . Our first need and duty is to reach a new attitude of mind with regard to unemployed persons and to the condition of unemployment itself. The problem does not affect one class only. The "blackcoated unemployed" present a serious problem. Boys and girls who have had a secondary education even are finding it much more difficult than formerly to find employment, especially in some parts of the country. AH this misery and degradation is permitted to continue in a world where the power of producing wealth, and indeed the actual production of wealth, is beyond that of alt former generations. There must be something grievously wrong with a society in which, while multitudes are suffering from undernourishment, food is being burned and thrown into the sea for lack of a market. _ The fruits of science and of its application to industry are gifts of God as He moves and works in history; if we so use them that their benefits are not available -for all His people we frustrate His purpose, and a social order which requires a curtailment of their use in producing goods while any lack must be condemned by the Christian conscience.