TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 25306, 8 June 1935, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Women Workers. Four women out of every five in England, Scotland and Wales are wageearners at some period of their lives, and the conditions of women’s labour and the openings for women’s work are thus of personal interest to some 16,000,000 people, writes Mrs Ray Strachey in her book, “Careers and Openings for Women.” Rather more than third of the employed women are engaged in some form of personal domestic service, and another third are employed in industry. The remainder are engaged in commerce, transport, clerical work, or professional occupations; and if the labour which they perform were to be suddenly withdrawn, there would be an instantaneous breakdown, in the life of the country. Mental Welfare. The importance of recognizing when children show symptoms of mental maladjustment, and enabling them to develop into, healthy-minded, useful members of society, was stressed by speakers at the annual meeting and luncheon of the Institute of Medical Psychology. London, which deals with people of all ages. They agreed that our mental hospitals, prisons and Borstal institutions would be much less full if abnormal traits or maladjustments were set right in childhood. “Dicators see the importance of the child, democrats must do the same,” said Lord Allen of Hurtwood, adding, “The preventive work of medical science in the sphere of mental wellbeing would do more to protect democracy by giving us a nation of healthy-minded citizens than anything we politicians can do through the Statute Book. The next generation will never be able to deal with the problems unless we .give them alert, controlled, and co-operative minds. Our democratic system cannot stand up to its job if citizens are slinking away from imaginary dangers: they must be able to call the bluff of political prejudice. Emotional swings of the electoral pedulum might destroy democracy, for it is set the task of making rapid changes without upheaval.”

Limit to Free Speech. The best justification for the intervention of the powers of law and order to limit free speech is the likelihood of

a breach of the peace following on the winged words of the orator, writes Sir Arnold Wilson in the 8.8. C. Annual. An inflammatory leaflet seldom arouses the passions that burning words may aroUse; men seldom proceed to wreck an office or do violence to individuals after reading a newspaper article. Mob psychology is a strange thing. Mass emotion cannot be evoked by a speech relayed by wireless, however perfect the reproduction of the voice. I have watched thousands of Germans listening to the voice of their Fuhrer (Herr Hitler) through loud-speakers, and I have watched them as they saw and heard the man himself, though his voice reached them only through the microphone. The difference was as great as between a portrait and the living subject of the painter’s art. I have seen mobs abroad worked up by degrees to a state of unreasoning passion by a speaker who was not known by sight or name to the vast majority of his hearers. Such powers are rare and are seldom wisely used. They are seldom combined with much book-learning; they are generally possessed by, and usually influence, simple folk to whom the written word makes no appeal; with them the spoken word holds sway. The orator speaks to them by word and gesture, but also, perhaps, in some more obscure way, and the crowd, like a flock of birds, communicate their feelings to him and to each other. The words used are of secondary importance. The earnest voice, the impassioned countenance, the agitated gestures, give life to words that in cold print seem meaningless. Of all human faculties the gift of speech is the oldest and the most powerful. Like other things it must be used with discretion, and must be controlled by public opinion, of which our law is the ultimate expression.