The Docay of Honour.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12480, 17 September 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Docay of Honour.

(By W. J. Dawson, in " North British Advertiser.") The phrase is not my own. It was used lately by one of our best-known public men in a private conversation 1 lwd with him. He says :—" What strikes me most in the present condition of affairs is the decay of honour. Men no longer seem to regard consistency as a virtue. They permit themselves to net us no public man .of an earlier generation would have thought of acting, however loose his code of honour. In the fight for personal ascendency and power friendships are ignored and pledges are opeulv violated. Truth seems to ne of small value. Men confronted with statements which thoy "have made a year ago, which are diametrically opposed to statements thoy are now making, laugh at what men of an earlier generation would have felt an indelible disgrace. Everything should be sacrificed in self-interest, or in the interest of n party, seems to be the rule. "The result "is that the general standard of honour is lowered in the entire nation. Smartness is the great virtue, and smartness is it synonym for unscrupulousness.' Such was tlie general drift of my friend's allocution. . . . What is honour? Burke

once spoke of the " chastity of honour," and his phrase is illumining. 'Honour is n kind of chastity—a fastidious sense of right, a scrupulousness of conscience, a high and severe standard of moral action. . . . The case of the lute Whitnkcr Wright is a notorious instance of the decay of honour. What is the most startling revelation in aj! the sordid story? It i" not that falsified balance slicetr—•na*>y roeues have ilonn that. But it is lhat'hj did not recognise anything wrong. ">r shanffiil. or dishonest in the net. II

vas for him mi (-vdinarv ait of business. . . . Tn America, lie said, the public 'id nut "squeal" when a financial eras', anie. He was nma/cd that the English •>ub!ic "squealed"—that is to say, that men and. women were angry and vindictive wb:n they found themselves mined. . . . . The' root of the whole matter 'ies in the lust of wealth, which is the coarsest and commonest characteristic of »elf-advantagc and invariably destroys tlie sense of honour. To the man driven onward in his career by this lust all business is a game of beggar-my-neighbour. He becomes unscrupulous in the use of means for the attainment of his ends. . . .

The dcc.iv of honour is more than n personal question; it is a national qucs tion. The prowl old English boast was hat an Englishman's wovd was his bond. \s a nitre commercial asRCt that reputation was of enormous value. Confidence

is probably the most valuable of all assets in a nation which exists by trade. - The Englishman's reputation for honour is not wholly dead. . . . - Nations may bo

ruined in many ways. but. by none move lurelv than a lowered standard of honour.