Truth WHEEL OF TIME

NZ Truth, Issue 984, 4 October 1924, Page 4

Truth

WHEEL OF TIME

NEW ZEA..UAN"D HEAD OP-TCB:

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A WONDERFUL OCTOGENARIAN

The hope that one of the finest minds of the generation may yet have a message worth while, when on the threshold of the ninth decade, was realised the other day when the Rotary Club at Wellington was addressed by Sir Robert Stout. If considered merely from the standpoint of an historical philosophic review of mankind's progress, the utterance of the Chief Justice was scholarly and illuminating. But it was more than a review. It was. a warning — a warning- deciphered from the crumbling ruins of dead empires. The optimism that prefaced the address was characteristic. So bril-'i liant and virile a mind as Sir Robert Stout's is, of necessity, optimistic. Optimism is partly a cause, and partly an effect, of a mentality like that. 'Pessimism is not for minds that retain their brilliance and proportion a.t eighty; nor are such minds built for pessimism. But the cheering capacity of the veteran statesman and Judge, who is able to garland his warning with the flowers of hope, should not blind "the public to the quality of the warning, j and to the fact that they walk on the ruins of at least six past civilisations. * ':: .. ::' :: Optimism, like everything else, is both good and bad. Cheerfulness is vital m an emergency; but, there is not much doubt that every one of those dead civilisations went to the tomb doped with comfortable notions of its own self-sufficiency. The optimists became chloroformists; . and the liquidator stepped m. In most civilisations there is a rough balance between the Jeremiahs and the anti-Jeremiahs. The anti-Jeri-miahs say that every old generation considers every young generation to be wrong — : so why worry? Each of the twain is right m its season. Unfortunately, it is so hard to pick the season.

A pessimism founded on no real danger is an affliction, but an optimism that throws a paper bridge across an abyss is a calamity. Did. Babylonia go down through having an excess of optimists of the wrong sort, or because a slothful populace laughed the pessimists out of court? If those ancient people could come back to argue the matter, they might? be undecided still. '

However, as the community of today is pleased to take it's pill from the Chief Justice sugar-coated with optimism, so be it Only, before passing on to those evidences of .progress that he related with so much discernment, we are surely m order, m expressing the hope that Sir Robert will see his way to expound at greater length the eugenic principles to which he* made brief reference at the close of his address. "While many sciences diagnose disease, the science of eugenics is one of the few that seek to point a remedy. When 'Sir Robert Stout refers to the breeding of farm animals, and longs for "some endeavor to improve the breed of mankind," he says enough to arouse a demand for more. The views of specialists are on record. It is the guidance •of statesmen, judges, and public leaders that is m request. • Admittedly, since medical schools were first established m the Chief Justice's own land 200 years ago, niedical science has made dazzling progress, and- -mankind.. Jiaa -been. _comfortedj

WELLINGTON. LUKE'S LANB

therein; yet the doctors are even now but faintly knocking at the door of such pioneer sciences as eugenics. They have acquired a wonderful facility m re-shaping the body, and all that Sir Robert Stout says of Monro and his successors is true; but the doctors are still unable to counter the increase m the cancer rate. They believe they have a "palliative"; they think it may prove an "arrester"; they still grope for a preventive. • . It may prove that cancer can be coped with only by modification of undesirable practices m the modern, "civilised" life of man. Artificiality is surely entitled to its own peculiar penalties. By this means, the narrow question of "how not to die" may broaden into the v/ider problem of "how to live." This broader view of physical, mental, and moral -health would mean great changes to a toocommercialised age, and to a medical profession that is making some effort to free itself of commercialisation. Technical '• advances m sanitation have, as Sir Robert pointed out, accomplished wonders m a certain department of preventive hygiene, and the war against the germ of typhoid fever has restricted its toll on human life. But there is still no movement to prevent — by some common accord — the living of lives under hectic conditions — either m pursuit of money or pursuit of pleasure — that ruin nerves and produce no real happiness. "The world," says a recent writer, "is a half-way house." If this statement is not yet exactly true, it is coming true. Enormous advances, says Sir Robert Stout, havtTti'een made by the world m "the- things that make life worth living." And this is true. But is life better lived? Have men more possessions than formerly, or more quarrels over the right of possession?

The Chief Justice can look back eighty years, to a time when people could not move with any speed from place to place, and many of them never moved at all beyond their little radius; m fact, a large part of mankind was immobile, and mentally asleep. If the Chief Justice could live again for eighty years, he would greet the Twenty-First Century .of the Christian era, and. would, m writing the numbers of the year, start with a "2." That he may do so is "Truth's" worst thought about him. Sir Robert spoke of the inequality of men (which connotes inequality of reward) and urged arbitration instead of 'strikes. Which, of course, is sense. But generally the last to recognise inequality are the unequal. i : : : : : : But let nothing that we have said by way of qualification wash our admiration of the message conveyed by the Grand Old Octogenarian to his fellow countrymen. His is no "poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled." Fled are many v voices he has known; but his own remains lucid, reasoning, resonant. And it is a fact to bo thankful for that New Zealand has benefited so greatly by the leadership of her Judges. What Bench elsewhere has achieved so high a standard of legal intelligence? What Bench would not have gloried m the mellow' character and soundness of a Williams, the philosophic depth of a Chapman, the penetrative mentality of an Edwards, the sagacity of a Stout, the sapience of a Salmond? Past traditions of our. Bench^ar&Jaeing.Joftil^amainfalned;