The Star. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1926. “THEN GENTLY SCAN YOUR BROTHER MAN.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17862, 2 June 1926, Page 8

The Star. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1926. “THEN GENTLY SCAN YOUR BROTHER MAN.”

A Dunedin magistrate, addressing the Society for the Protection of Women and Children in regard to the criticism that juvenile offenders were not dealt with on modern scientific methods, remarked that he had been urged to apply psycho-analytic methods in such cases, but believed such a course would not only be wrong but also mischievous and harmful, for his experience was that the hoys he had to deal with were on the whole not bad boys, and presented few problem cases. All this, of course, was sound, old-time reasoning. “ Spare the rod and spoil the child ” is a very good motto even for the juvenile courts. And yet it would be a pity if the magistrate’s remarks were interpreted as belittling psycho-analysis in its bearing on sociology. Hitherto the science has been applied largely to diseases known as neuroses, which are held to be not so much diseases in the ordinary sense as forms of individual reaction to social situations, problems and difficulties. The young woman who was before the Christchurch Court the other day was rather a case for the psycho-analysts than the average juvenile offender would be. And yet, as psychoanalysis is peculiarly concerned with the study of motives and aims, it is applicable to many a battling case of juvenile wrongdoing. There ate, of course, unqualified persons who have chosen to exploit psycho-analysis for their own purposes, -and have brought discredit on the work, but experience is beginning to throw important light on the inner significance of social questions of all kinds, and therefore magistrates should be slow to discredit a science that offers great possibilities in their own field of activity, especially if they are persuaded that the cases they deal with are on the whole “ not bad.” Psycho-analysis does not condone, it merely investigates, and the right treatment for W’hat is observed in the child may avert later improprieties. There is an educative process to be undertaken in every child’s life. Browning wrote: “The sweetest child we smile on for his pleasant want of the whole world to break up or suck in his mouth, seeing no other good in it—would be rudely handled by that world’s inhabitants if he retained those angelic infantile desii'cs when he has grown six feet high, black and bearded.” The importance of dealing appropriately with the boy or girl who develops anything but angelic inclinations, and shows no tendency to grow out of them, becomes a sociological problem of the first importance.

The promotion of t a Bill giving the Christchurch Tramway Board power to scrap old or unremunerative lines is the most practical step the board has ever taken to get its house in order. It can safely be said that the tramway system has been crippled by non-paying extensions which were created as special rating areas, but were able to evade their rating responsibilities when a deficiency occurred, and in consequence became a burden on the system as a whole. The board, making a virtue of necessity, tried to persuade itself that such lines were conferring a benefit on the community by taking the people into the suburbs, but the impropriety of such a policy will be realised when it is stated that the credit of central ratepayers was pledged to make good such deficiencies, while the central cash rider was being penalised daily to avert the imposition of a rate. There is every prospect that the tramway board, by scrapping unprofitable lines wherever they exist, and instituting bus services more in keeping with the transport requirements involved, will be able to show a genuine surplus, without juggling with reserves. This course, which has been strongly urged by the “ Star ” for years past, will also clear the way for the substitution of municipally-owned buses. In that connection it is oppprtune to point out to the correspondent “ Service Not Profits,” who sets his sai|s to catch even the faintest breeze in favour of the bus regulations, that the board’s new policy could have been brought forward long before the regulations were hatched. The position is really summarised in the old adage: “The devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.”