Inge Denounces Social Wastage.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19240, 29 November 1930, Page 8

Inge Denounces Social Wastage.

CIVILISATION which gives its whole attention to environment and pays n heed to the inborn qualities of its children is heading for disaster. That was the theme of an address on eugenics delivered by Dean Inge at the Church Congress at Newport recently. The desire to improve the intrinsic quali ties of future generations, or to stop their further deterioration, was a purely disinterested and public-spirited quest. It was based on the conviction that what a man was was much more important than what he has, or knows, or even than what he does. El ® ED ED El ID M El El ID ED ID El El E 3 ID ID ID ED ID El HI I

“Is not this also the Christian view?" asked Dean Inge. “Is the Church to help these disinterested workers, or is it to ridicule and misrepresent them? The effects of racial retrogression, Dean Inge said, might be masked for a time by apping the hitherto unused abilities of romising children from the working class, hese might be educated at the public excnse and then drafted into the learned rofessions and other positions of responsibility. “ But to promote the ablest sons of the labourer into a sterile class can only accelerate the progress of real decline; for we are at present breeding, not from the learned professions or from the capable and self-respecting artisan class, but from the dwellers in the slums, the waste products of our social system, and especially from the mentally deficient/*