The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1913. DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 316, 30 May 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1913. DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

The papers these clays seem to be full of domestic tragedies, and hardly an issue passes without our having to record, either by telegram or cablegram, some pitiable incident at the fireside. Murder, suicide, desertion and cruelty appear to be more rife in the colonies than they should be, taking into consideration the law of averages. Of course, incidents of this sort are always seized upon by the newspaper reporter as excellent "copy," but, quite apart from this, home life does not seem to be what it was in the days of our fathers and our forefathers. There is always a tendency to view the roseate past with ruby-tinted spectacles, but the restrictions of domestic life which were imposed upon our boys and our girls in those.days seem to have more effectively moulded their characters than the relaxations permitted to-day do those of our children. Perhaps our grandmothers were more patient, ly the pure exigency of atmosphere and surroundings, than our mothers and our wives and our daughters are to-day, and we do not know that this "taking of life lying down" was altogether an unmixed blessing. But it is easy to go to the other extreme. We have no objection to the hockey girl and the golf girl and even to the mixe'd swimming girl, who would have made our forebears sit up in horror and amazement, for open-air exercise is infinitely better for our girls, spiritually and physically, than the old system of domestic restraint that kept them "cribbed, cabined and confined," in a daily life that was one long period of restrictive chapcronage. Still the effect of this greater 'liberty of action among our young folks docs not appear to have been altogether wholesome, and to it, in its unrestricted form, must be attributed much-of-.the domestic unhappiness that ! exists, and which culminates so often in, the pitiable tragedies that are published j from time to time, with all the bald cal--5 lousness of telegraphy. Our girls marry too young and too quickly, and the re-1 suit fs that "incompatability of temper," as the divorce court loves to call it, is 1 far too much in evidence. We should hear Jess of the domestic seamy side if • parents paid a little more attention to ■ tlieir children. Wc do not suggest that our Jacobs should wait seven years for their Rachels, but there is surely, a happy medium between this period and an engagement as the result of a first mixed i foursome. A quieter supervision of home life, and a stronger friendliness between 1 parents, and children, would do much to stay the''dark finger of distress that writes such painful stories across our pages. , '