GOOD LOOKS IN POLITICS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17236, 16 April 1930, Page 5

GOOD LOOKS IN POLITICS

WORLD’S UGLIEST MEN BISHOP OF DURHAM & VOTES SUNDERLAND, March 1. Addressing! Sunderland Rotary Club to-day on “Advertising,” the Bishop of Durham said that the influence of the photograph in politics was likely to increase as female candidates multiplied and female voters tended to exercise the franchise. It. was always an irrelevant influence; sometimes it was misleading, and it could- 1 be grossly unfair, for, indeed, human experience had made it certain that there was no secure connection between goods looks and either good character or sound opinions. • “For my part,” said the Bishop, not having been blessed with the aspect of an Adonis bV a discriminating Providence, 1 feel that the two most honored persons in history arc those whom 1 will take leave to call not only among the ugliest of mankind, but the most eminent- -the natron saints of plain men —.Socrates awT Abraham Lincoln. VULGAR HOARDINGS. In our modern urbanised life, towndwellers were dependent for their artistic training largely on the hoardings and the films. ib‘ wondered what would be tiie effect upon the small children who gazed at hoardings which were vulgar, crude, and. in many cases, so monstrous in their suggestion. The eyes of young children were fixed upon these spectacles, except when they were taken to see scenes of crime and debauchery, which teo often formed the staple of American films Could they wonder that great populations in Europe and Americii displayed too often a vulgarity of mind and degradation of feeling and sense which must overwhelm us with humiliation ? Referring to his visit last year to Lourdes, the Bishop said tlial all rightthinking people, when they got to Lourdes, Were conscious "I an acute shock of repugnance at the parade of what he called the commercialised devotion which was there presented. He was outraged Ivy the spectacle, and when he read in the press of Billy Sunday s new way ol making converts by evnuii'elist talks, lie wrote in his journal: “Lot this he placed in the scale against Lourdes, and watch which kicks the 'beam.” The truth of it- was that it was not a. question of one truth or another, or one religion and another, but where advertisement came in, piety went out.