RACIAL PROGRESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19504, 3 February 1926, Page 5

RACIAL PROGRESS

ROTARY CLUB ADDRESS AN INTERESTING STUDY. "WEEDS OF HUMANITY.’’ “Racial Progress” was the subject of an interesting address at Mon day’s Rotary Club luncheon. Air Kcnric B. Murray, now of Wanganui, and late secretary of the London Chamber of Commerce. President A. Doig presided, and briefly introduced the speaker, who, he said, was responsible for the formation of the London Port Authority. The speaker prefaced his remarks by stating that he had to thank Rotarians for their very cordial reception. He confessed to being glad of that introduction, because the reforms he had to suggest to them were so important that some of them who did not know him might have been inclined to look on him as a more theorist or visionary Utopian, whereas he sought to be purely practical. The late Great War called for proportional changes in national life. The London “Spectator” said, “What the country needs is a bold and comprehensive policy.” Sir Tan Hamilton, speaking as an organiser of groat exexperience, and particularly of the growing competition of Germany and the United States, said: “Nothing can stop the progress of an intelligent and disciplined nation.” He, the speaker, had audaciously attempted to combine those two requirements into one policy for his hearers’ consideration. The title of his little paper was “Racial Progress,” but had he been as his age entitled, a pessimist, he would have called it “Racial Degeneration.” Civilisation. Now. to attain progress, to build up ami renew, they must secure their foundation. That foundation was their present civilisation. Let them take a cursory glance at it as it stood to-day. Civilisation in its progress!ven ess was necessarily a burden as well as a bene-

fit. The number of citizens unable to bear the constant growth of that burden was ever-increasing. That inability represented not what they dismissed cursorally as “popular discontent,” but what was really ignorance of a citizen’s duties, and unwillingness to perform those duties. History told • them that civilisation depended absolutely on the quality of its members, so, it they permitted them to degenerate the country declined pro rata. Mere numbers wore nothing, as was evidenced in China and Russia. ‘Superior stock.” therefore, was essential to racial progress. They could breed humankind as effectively as farm animals, but it would be necessary to amend the status of the individual as against the State before producing any considerable effect on the nation. Yet everywhere the racial tendency was downwards. Nations were dying off from the top and spreading out from below. That growing preponderance of the under-man was slowly undermining their civilisation, and from that they realised that continuation of the status quo meant Imperial deterioration. They had reached the point where they must either secure a superior stock or perish racially like so many of their predecessors. Human law, political, social and revolutionary, was mostly wrong and artificial inasmuch as it but all too frequently contravened nature, despite modern scientific knowledge. They deliberately ignored that knowledgc'both in law and in daily life, so they must expect nature to punish them whenever she got the opportunity. Time permitted of giving them only three illustrations of those contraventions, but they should suffice as they were each superlative in their effects. Let them take, for instance, the constructions on which the whole of the Parliamentary Governments of modern republics wore based, with the single exception, as far as he knew, of Italy. Those constitutions were based on the untruth of equality, although they were fullv conscious of the fact that such equalitv was contrary to all the aspects of nature, of which they had knowledge from mankind downwards. The resillt of that transgression of nature’s laws was that so-called “popular Government’ to-day, already was and must become more and more the expression of the semi-ignorant and biased 03 section of the population; in other words, they were not only breeding but actually governing from’ below. Both history and science told them what must bo the inevitable result of such a policy. The Marriages Laws. His second illustration was contained in the marriage laws as tolerated by most of the white peoples to-day. Marriage was popularly regarded as a purely personal matter, concerning only the two individuals involved, with, at the most, the relatives on both sides. Any national or racial, constitutional or Parliamentary interest in individual marriage was widely ignored. The U.S.A., Switzerland, Holland, and, he believed, modern Italy, were commencing to recognise a State interest above and beyond that of the more individual, but any absolute or entire predominance of the State over the individual was not, to his knowledge, existing anywhere as yet. Both society and [the Churches sanctioned the marriage oi the undersized, unheal th Jr, feebleminded, or diseased. That clearly was direct interference with the laws of nature, as, when obstructed, nature relentlessly destroyed the unfit in favour of the preservation of the race. Unless mankind by the adoption of strini gent health certificates before marriage and a gradually extending system both of segregation and of sterilization of the unfit, were aroused to protect themselves against the extending degeneration of the white peoples, there could be but one solution to the problem, that was, national decay. Here, again, science warned them of the impending danger and supplied the remedy. Which was to be the first nation to obey nature and amend its laws and marriage customs with a view to producing that ideal race which present knowledge placed within the attainment of the willing? National Education. The aim of the founders of National Education was as egotistic and as narrowly class inspired as any other law with an erroneous basis. Labour and Socialism at one time believed that they had only to teach youth carefully to convert them all into geniuses, and that the “lower” or poorer classes would then “rule the rost” by sheer force of numbers. So compulsory education was introduced at public cost in