The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1937. Death Answers All Questions

Southland Times, Issue 23374, 4 December 1937, Page 6

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1937. Death Answers All Questions

The death-beds of great men have always had a strange attraction for mankind. Every literature abounds with last sayings many of them apocryphal—which have been treasured through the generations and examined by many readers for dark meanings, and perhaps for a glimpse of some new brightness at the threshold of a larger life. It should not be surprising, therefore, if public interest centres on what may be the last illness of General Erich Ludendorff. He is a man who has had powers of life and death over many thousands. On the eve of great battles it was his mind that framed the tactics which arranged the destruction of armies, so that when his hand hovered over the minute flags of his maps at headquarters the lives of unknown men were in danger, and his decisions were fatal moments in the processes of destiny. In later years he has announced his loyalty to the new paganism which turns back to the old stormy gods of Teuton mythology, and this has added a further interest to the last hours of a life in which there has been much struggle and violence. For although there are many who adopt a merely nominal Christianity, the thought of a frank paganism still brings men to a. pause, and they wonder at the courage or the hardihood of those who stand apart from general beliefs and follow a lonely adventure of the spirit. Yet there is a certain foolishness, linked to the surviving moods of superstition, in those who find too njuch significance in death-bed attitudes. “I am not afraid,” said General Ludendorff, according to a cable message printed yesterday. “Nothing in this life can frighten me,” he added. “I have been through too much.”

The fear of death may visit occasional sick-beds; but it is really at its strongest when health is normal and life seems full of promise. It is the uncertainty of the margins that troubles powerful imaginations and leads them down dark ways of the mind. Hamlet could think calmly of a long sleep, but he paused at the thought of the dreams which might disturb it. Doctor Johnson was most afraid of death while he was robust and active; he avoided the subject as much as possible, or considered it in a mood of deep solemnity; and it was the persistent questioning of Boswell on this forbidden theme that led to their most violent quarrels. Yet there was no terror for him when his time came. Like so many others who have flinched from the thought of mortality the final experience was made easy for him; in the long preparation of nature he came imperceptibly to the moments he had dreaded. There is no real heroism in death unless it comes when life runs full and deep. The famous outburst of Claudio, in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”, has given an imperishable form to this natural shrinking from a sudden and violent end. And Seneca, who had spent many hours of his busy life explaining why man had no cause to be afraid of his inevitable transition from one state to another, needed all his stoicism — and the tender courage of his wife —when the officers of Nero came to superintend his enforced suicide. In the lives of great men and women the common experience receives an emphasis which is sometimes false. There are unknown people who pass every day from the familiar scenes of this world, making no long struggle or complaint, and aided by nature in a quiet descent to the shadows. There are some, indeed, to whom death seems dilatory. They look to it from a depth of physical suffering, and see in it a longed-for release that is too slow in coming. In modern times the problem of euthanasia has received an increasing amount of attention from humane thinkers. There are men who say that in special cases death should be hastened, and from time to time an instance of rough intervention by the relation of some obscure sufferer brings this attitude into prominence. In other ages there must have been a great deal of unofficial euthanasia; and it is probably true, also, that those who were overtaken by painful disease usually had a short term for their sufferings. Modern science has learned many ways of prolonging life, and the conscience of the medical profession can permit no interference. Nevertheless a strong belief in the need for a controlled euthanasia has been steadily gaining ground. Towards the end of last year Lord Ponsonby introduced a Voluntary Euthanasia Bill to the House of Lords. It was framed with careful attention to the possibilities of abuse, and was intended to provide relief for persons desiring it, who were “suffering from an illness of a fatal I and incurable character involv-

ing severe pain.” The Bill was designed so that euthanasia could be administered only by a doctor, in the presence of an official witness; and special provisions were to make it necessary for a “referee” appointed by the Minister of Health to satisfy himself, in a personal interview with the patient, that the action was entirely voluntary, and undertaken in a full knowledge and clearness of mind. The Bill was ultimately rejected, but Lord Ponsonby later expressed an opinion that this was inevitable, and time was needed to prepare the public mind for what was described as “a radical departure from oldestablished custom and tradition.” The principle of euthanasia seems unchallengeable on humanitarian grounds; but it must be admitted that a legal status for “the right to die” would bring grave problems and dangers. The best of doctors are capable of making errors, and there can seldom be a complete certainty that death must follow a particular physical condition. Furthermore, medical science is now making such rapid advances that even if cures are impracticable it may be possible, in many cases now considered beyond the reach of human aid, to reduce pain to a point where life is still bearable. Of the ethical problems implicit in euthanasia it is difficult to write briefly. There is a deep-rooted belief, sanctioned by Christian teachings, that life is not merely a human privilege, but a divine gift which must be surrendered only at the appointed time. One of the greatest of modern thinkers, Albert Schweitzer, has made the sanctity of life a basis for his philosophy, believing that if men could be taught to reverence the divinity that dwells briefly in physical bodies there could be no final difficulty in bringing peace to a frightened world. And could this attitude be sustained if men had the right to dispose of their own lives in the despair that comes with intolerable pain? Science may yet find an answer to these problems—but only with the aid of a deeper thought than that which now seeks humbly to rationalize all mechanical achievements, losing sight of moral responsibilities in the satisfactions of a material progress. Of these, and all other problems, death is at once the constant reminder, and the final solution.