NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22032, 12 February 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE POST-WAR CHILD At the Public School Masters' Conference at Harrow, Dr. H. CrichtonMiller, founder and senior physician of tho Institute of Medical Psychology, spoko on post-war tendencies. In the influence of the war, he said, many people found a popular and rather melodramatic explanation of an abnormal child, but tho abnormality was more probably duo to the teni]x>r of tho father since ho came back from tho war. Among post-war influences not directly associated with tho war was tho mechanisation of life. Schoolmasters would have to deal more and more with a generation of very suggestible youngsters who would take ready-made opinions much more willingly than did their fathers or grandfathers. Schoolmasters should encourage boys to think for themselves. Another feature of postwar life was the small family. "One of the things which will probably wreck our civilisation ultimately," said Dr. Crichton-Miller. "will be when we have a House of Commons, a Cabinet, editors of newspapers, and so on, who are all only sons —or only daughters. Then people will wake up and see that the problem of tho small family is not merely a question of economics."

DIVORCE AND PUBLICITY Why there should be an unprecedented number of divorce cases set down for hearing this Hilary term is, says the Daily Telegraph, a question of much social interest. The figures are striking. One thousand three hundred and fifty-seven suits await the three Judges of the Divorce Division, and this time last year, -when the list was considered long, the number was 109 S. Five or six years ago half the present length would have been normal. If we were to look further back we shoidd find that the number of divorces granted annually is about five times as many as 20 years ago. Yet those who believe that this chance implies a decline of the standard of morality would find it hard to make good their case. Several factors account more than sufficiently for the increase. There is, however, no doubt that the main cause of the multiplication of divorce is the rule of secrecy in the Divorce Court. Tho Act which enforces that was passed in 1926, when divorces numbered 2622. In 1933 the number was 3988. " There are so many cases," it was remarked from the Bench recently, " because the newspapers are not allowed to report them." Whether this is an argument for or against publicity we must leave to the casuists. PEARY'S CLAIM DISCOUNTED

The North Pole has never been reached on foot, according to Mr. J: Gordon Hayes in his book, "The Conquest of the North Pole." Mr. Hayes deals with Peary's claims as follows: "There have been inanv critics of Peary's chiims, on both sides of the Atlantic, and all disinterested inquirers have come to the same conclusion—that he did not reach the Pole; by this it may be understood that he was never within 50 or more miles of its position. Peary said that he returned from his camp at the Pole to latitude 87deg. 47min. N. in not more than 56 hours. This is a distance of 150 miles, apart from deviations over the pack ice and the drifting of the floes. Hence a man 53 years old either walked considerably more than 75 miles per day for two days over a rough surface or ho never came near the Pole. Ho walked 401 miles to travel from where he left Bartlett, to the Pole and__back to the same latitude, and he claimed to have covered this distance at an average of 50 miles per day. He tried to conceal these excessive speeds and distances, but he gave the data for them. His total unwitnessed distance was 799 miles, covered in 23 marches that average 34 miles a march. University students ara now being taught the truth, and some of the learned societies that accepted Peary's claim, before his record was examined, have now Revised their verdict in accordance with the facts brought to light, and it is high time that other societies found the moral courage to do the same. Thus the North Pole may be said to have been besieged for several years, but emerged from the infantry attack like a virgin fortress."

WOMEN AND POLITICS It was remarked the other day by an observer of conditions in the Saar that the women appear to be more pro-Nazi than the men, and a similar preference is said to exist among their sisters of the Reich. This was hardly to have been expected, the Morning Post comments, since a conspicuous feature of Hitlerism is its insistence 011 making politics and administration a close preserve of the male sex. Apart from the dubious privilege of voting in Herr Hitler's plebiscites, women have been rigidly excluded from all share in political activity; their allotted function in the totalitarian State is to stay at home and mind the children. What is the explanation of their singular partiality for Hitlerism and of their apparently enthusiastic surrender of their hard-won "emancipation"? If we reject the improbable assumption that German women are differently constituted from other women, it may bo reasonable to conclude that the feminine temperament is more susceptible to Herr Hitler's kind of emotional appeal. But what, then, becomes of all tho feminist agitation of recent years? Was it just so much froth, and has a brief acquaintance with the hustings served to convince women that the 'hearth is a better place after all? Perhaps the answer to this is that, in a democracy, women feel entitled to equal political rights, because equality is a principle of democracy, but that where, as under a Nazi regime, the equalitarian philosophy is denied, inequality, so far from carrying a stigma, is justified by the consoling reflection that there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon. Can. it, moreover, be said that in this country, during the past 15 years, women have exercised on our political life a distinctive influence commensurate with the numerical weight of their vote? The space of time is admittedly too short in which to judge whether such an influence is likely to become more assertive in the future; it took many more than 15 years for the concession of the working class suffrage to produce the Socialist Party. Throughout history individual women have,, of course, displayed a marked aptitude for affairs of State, but we shall probably have to leave it to posterity to discover how far woman, as a species, is really a "political animal." s