The Wanganui Chronicle. FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2, 1928. JUVENILE SUICIDES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 260, 2 November 1928, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle. FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2, 1928. JUVENILE SUICIDES

is the latest complaint to affect the youth of Britain. It is the most disastrous of all the postwar maladies which have afflicted mankind.

In London a 16-year-old office girl jumps from a fifth floor window, in a fit of pique because she has been mildly rebuked. Shortly before, another girl has suicided because she had to wear her mother’s black hat at a funeral; a wealthy youth jumps from a window in a fit of annoyance because be accidently cuts his face with a razor whilst, shaving—it not occurring to him to use the erring blade for the great deed. Another young man, just “world-weary,” jumps into the Thames, not troubling to remove his hands from his pockets.

London is not alone in respect to juvenile self-destruction. A few months back there was a regular epidemic of boy and girl suicides in the United States and in Germany—and the horrors of these were outdone by some frightful murders perpetrated by juveniles. There is a rush of opinion to ascribe the cause. A eugenist says that science is keeping alive babies who would not otherwise survive; a surgeon thinks that the evil arises from young people assuming responsibilities too early in life; a mental specialist merely remarks that suicide whims seize the strongest minded.

“Weariness before the age of discretion” observes the coroner who holds the latest inquest. One does not recall this weariness among boys and girls in the days when school was a house of drudgery, when there was plenty of work in the home as well as in the class-room, when almost all journeying was done afoot, when there were no picture shows—and when people went to bed early because there was nothing else to do, and arose early for the very opposite reason. But nowadays in many cases the Book of Life is opened to the eyes ,of the toddler,‘and the adolescent walks arm in arm with senility. Youth is “world-weary” when it should be marching with joyous steps in the springtime of life. There should be taught the maxim of Goethe: “Unto the youth should be shown the worth of a noble and ripened age; and unto the old man, youth; that both may rejoice in the eternal circle, and life may in life be made perfect.” But where, alas! are the teachers in an age which imparts no knowledge but the material?