IDEALS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19914, 9 August 1927, Page 8

IDEALS

SERVICE AND PEACE “BETTER TIMES TO BE’’ ’ “Better times are yet to bo”’ said’ the Rev. James ißarr, the Scots M.P., in an address to the Wanganui. Rotary Club yesterday, when ho expressed his conviction that the Rotary motto of “Service before Self” was one of the most powerful influences for a happier wor||d. There was a very large attendance of Rotarians and their friends, over which Rotarian P. Higginbottom presided. “The great ideal of Rotary is the service or humanity,” said the speaker,” and* this is an ideal which 4an be applied in the private lives of us all. The world will be a great deal better when the ideal of human service, human well-being, and human uplift is mad*e paramount and individual profit .is subordinated.” The history of Scotland would have been brighter if this had been the case, Said Mr Barr. Had service been considered before personal gain there would never have been the great clearances when hundreds of crofters were driven from their holdings because it was more profitable to grow wool than to encourage the crofters to cultivate their small holdings. In reforms of housing, public health, and education great strides had been made within, recent years and these were due principally to the ideal of service that was growing up. No longer did Scotland suffer from the black plagues and choleras which would often sweep away at fourth of the population of a great city. In a young country with good housing conditions there were not the same dangers but in Glasgow 12.8 per cent, of the population lived in single apartment houses. This problem was gadually being handled in Scotland but even now the population was 900 to the aero. It was glorious but true that men were able to rise out of this environment and lead great and noble lives, but it was heroism which should not be asked of men and women in civilised communities. “David Livingstone was born in a, single apartment house,” said Mr Ban, “but many mute, inglorious Livingstones had been strangled in their cradles.” The figures of the 1911 census showed that the death rates of boys under five years were for single- apartment houses 40.56, two rooms 30.2, three rooms 17.9, four rooms 10.27. In 1855 a normal year, the death rate in Glasgow was 32. At the present time it was 13.25 as compared with New Zealand’s 8.29. Since 1855 the infantile death rate of Glasgow had been reduced from 182 to 101—in New Zealand in 1925 it was 42.3. There was a vast field for service in education and in national and international activities. The League of Nations worked on the ideal of service not aggression axd it was service which lay behind the mandatory system- It was difficult to lead the nations away from exploiting natives anl less civilised peoples, but the speaker hoped that iq time there would be a commonwealth of natiolTs who had sunk their differences in cultivating the ideal of labouring for the well-being of mankind. No nation and no tribe was so backward and so uncivilised, ’he thought, that it would not respond to kindly actions, uplift, reason and betterment. “But human nature is being made better,” concluded Mr Barr, “notwithstanding what is said .about the good old times.”