A NATIONAL IDEAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1919, Page 7

A NATIONAL IDEAL.

ENGLAND'S UNPARDONABLE SIN. To bo an English gentleman has for centuries been the weekday religion of a great, part of our nation, said Dean Inge at a meeting of the Parents' Educational Association. The only unpardonable sin in England was to be a cad, that was to fall short of the standard of honor to which all gentlemen had to conform. The ideal was so sacred to us that we did not like to talk about it or appeal to it. A» for the essentials of a gentleman, the whole cult of old families was rather absurd. Only a very few of our noble families had shown unusual ability for more than two generations. Bine manners were certainly an ingredient. In occupation they found a nest of dying prejudices, though there was no reason why a gentleman should not be n working farmer or any other sort of working man. Bernard Shaw had said: "A gentleman is a man who tried not to take out of life more than he puts in " That was a revolutionary definition, but strictly true to what at heart we all felt to be the character of a gentleman, and it was a saying which could not be rubbed in too vigorously in trailing the young gentleman. According to the English school of thought, the usual qualities of a gentleman were truthfulness, courage, justice, and fair-play, the aborrence of meanness and crooked dealing, and respect for the personality of human beinga as such.