MODERN LUXURY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10638, 14 April 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

MODERN LUXURY.

LOSS OF BRUTE COURAGE AND

STAYING POWER.

The decay of national vitality is made the text for a scathing attack in the British Medical Jourual on the growth of luxurv and gresd in modern society. "The history of recent Avars lias shown that in non-mensurable and imponderable qualities, such as brute courage and what is called staying power, we are appreciably inferior to the men who fought under Nelson and Wellington," says this journal. "Tliis is the inevitable result of the more luxurious habits and finer sensibilities which the advance of civilisation brings in its train. "To many observers pur people seem to present "many of the social features Avhich marked the beginning of the decay of Rome. Noav, as then, luxury and effiminacy havo taken the place of the robust, if coarse, virility of an older time. "Tho ravening passion for advertise"ment—by crime, if it can be had "in no other way ; the love of public Avays which public manners breed ; the court paid by society to mimes and mummers; the fierce rage for gambling and the sacrifice of every duty to pleasure;, the vulgar display of wealth and the cynical indifference to anything that cannot be estimated in terms of money, which are among the marks of modem society, recall to some pessimists tho time when Nero — tlie real originator of the doctrine of art for art's sake — biurnt- Rome to make 'a grand spectacular display' representing the downfall of Troy town.; . "Tho vitality of the nation, which is something altogether different from the Vitality of the individuals composing it, is being sapped by these causes and by others that need not be named."