The Sun SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1928 THE MORALS OF THE PEOPLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 388, 23 June 1928, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1928 THE MORALS OF THE PEOPLE

IS New Zealand first in everything that is bad, sad and disagreeable as well as first in butter-fat, lamb and Rugby football? This question to the average citizen, would seem in ordinary circumstances merely to be foolish, but since the Primate of Neiv Zealand and other members of the Council of Christian Congregations have given it an answer in the affirmative (to use the jargon of politicians who also came under the council s lash of scorn), the community must accept and consider it as the nation s most serious problem. Speaking under the heading of “Delusions,” his Grace Archbishop Averill, told the representative churchmen and the country very plainly that one of the follies of the people was to shut their eyes to facts and assert that New Zealand had got on very well for the past 50 years without God and Christ. The Dominion,” said the Primate, “comparatively led the world in lunacy, suicides, prison population, divorces and illicit first conceptions.” This was in no sense an exercise of loose speaking ; his Grace supported his statement by a citation of cold figures from the Government’s book of official statistics. It took courage to reveal a lamentable record in so vivid a manner, and the Primate deserves national commendation for violently shaking the whole country out of its smug complacency and triple-armoured conceit. Naturally, the community will feel a bit too sore at the moment to express gratitude for an essential rousing. The Primate’s stark indictment of public morality thrusts upon the Dominion an unenviable distinction. v,]Most people would have been prepared to believe that, if the Primate’s subject had been set for competitive scholastic debate between New Zealand students and the team of debaters from Portland, Maine, U.S.A., the Americans who, though their enunciation of the King’s English, their mother tongue, is so heathenish as to require British missionary attention, are teaching our brilliant men how to argue instead of rant, would have won easily by merely quoting one word—-Chicago. But one never knows how far or how much astray statistics may take a person in passionate argument. It may be said, without incurring the charge of throwing dust in the people’s eyes and pretending that New Zealand is a moral paradise, that this indictment as to the Dominion’s relative supremacy in crime, lunacy, immorality and poor politicians is more terrible than true. Not that anyone would suggest that the Primate would trifle with the truth, but even the Government Statistician draws special attention in the Year Book to the fact that, in respect of crime statistics, “it is inadvisable to base comparisons of quasi-criminal offences between different countries on the statistics of summary convictions for the various countries.” It is true that over 46,000 persons were convicted in the criminal courts of New New Zealand during 1926 (last year’s figures are not yet available), but of that formidable total the majority comprised offences which were not criminal at all. Over 14,000 persons, for example, were convicted for breaches of traffic regulations, while more that 9,000 individuals had been stupid enough to become drunken nuisances. Of course, it cannot he denied that the prison population because of s erious offences, was then and still is deplorably high, and that a great deal of the crime for which men and youths become convicts was due to a lack of knowledge of the Shorter Catechism. It is difficult to understand why lunacy was cited as a reason for reproach. Sadness, rather than badness, is the lesson staring out of the official record. There are 5,500 patients in the Dominion's seven public mental hospitals, while the admissions now •dmost aggregate 1,000 a year. If not a fool, he would be a bold man who would assert that the wz-eekage of mind in all cases was attributable to sin or pagan conduct. In 1926, only 40 out of 947 admissions were due to immoral disease, 42 to alcohol, and no more than three to the drug habit. It might very well be regretted that overwork wrecked the minds of three persons only. As to immorality, the Primate could not have been too scornful. The record, known and unknown, is lamentable. If there is to be any remedy for loose morality at all, the Church, as well as responsible citizens, will have to arouse itself. It should uot be overlooked by the Council of Christian Congregations that if a stranger from a bad country were to ask if this worse country had no spiritual guidance, the answer would have to be an assurance that the Dominion has over two thousand clergymen and five times as many ardent and honest religious workers. It looks as if we all needed a shaking.