Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1906. "THE WHOLE WORLD KIN."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVI, Issue 8625, 6 December 1906, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1906. "THE WHOLE WORLD KIN."

* London, the Empire, and the world, in succession, have been shocked at the lurid pictures drawn by Father Vaughan of the doings of " smart society." More especially have English people been grieved by the recital of episodes occurring in English country houses. For the country houses of England were the fortresses of national character. In their domesticity and dignity and hospitality the finest of national traits survived ; and it comes with a shock to us all that the dry-rot of degeneration has set in here. We all knew that society in London was being invaded by the deterioration that accompanies rapid progress, and by the least desirable elements of society. Bridge, like adversity, brings together strange bedfellows. But there still remained one guarded space whose entrances were jealously guarded, and now even these have been penetrated. A well informed writer in Vanity Fair tells us of leapfrog and other horse-play in the hall. But he also tells of things which, ho rightly says, the Georgian period " could not beat for down-right vulgar impertinence." Here is one instance :—" A girl well-known in a certain hunting circle told me she was staying with some people, and after dinner, in the billiard-room, a man came up to her and said, ' Do let me weigh you, Miss X. I will carry you across the room.' There were weighing scales in the room—but she laughingly ancl quite good-naturedly refused. He then actually said, ' Well, look here, if you don't let me carry ycu I shall empty my whisky and soda down the back of your pretty white frock.' She, never for a moment supposing he was in earnest, said : " All right, you can, but I shan't be weighed,' and a moment later he actually turned at least half his whisky and soda down the back of her neck, amid roars of laughter from everyone. Such stories make one sad, indeed ; but they are less vividly illustrative of the deterioration of a particular section of society than of the general imperfectness of civilised society in general. The vulgarities of aristocratic society in London are surpassed by the ostentation and vulgarity of plutocratic society in New York. Under any temporary conditions, superfluity breeds luxury, and luxury begets vice, and degeneration sets in ; it matters not whether it is a fendal lord or a financial magnate, or an inheritor. It is here that we frankly acknowledge the excellence of the socialist ideal. Faithfully followed, it would, in time, supersede materialism, which mean* degradation; but here, also, we find our consistent argument strengthened. So long as socialism remains an ideal, it has ennobling effects. Reduce it to a system, and evils would follow in its train—as they have followed in the train of every system since the world began. Here, to our mind, lies the true inwardness of what, to many people, is a cryptic saying: "The letter killeth, the spirit make the alive." The ideal stimulates progress; the system calls a halt. The philosophers of old came nearer the truth of things than the organisers of to day.

The Workmen's Homes inNew Zealand have cost the State from £500 to £550 apiece. We suppose this is all right for the twentieth century, but in the nineteenth things were a little different. We once acquired, ourselves, forty acres of freehold land and a dwelling for a sum of seventy pounds and this small estate was within eight miles of the City of Wellington. Absurd prices are now being paid for land and buildings, but the policy of the Government has been to boom these values. If our own original seventy pound property had remained with us, it would doubtless have jumped up fifty per cent, in price every time the State valuer came round to look at it and would now, like the Workmen's Homes be worth anything over five hundred pounds. Fortunately we got rid of our little white elephant.