Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 50 Years.] FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1925. CURIOSITY AND PRIVACY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 13 March 1925, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 50 Years.] FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1925. CURIOSITY AND PRIVACY.

A characteristic of our times is the curiosity we display about each other and each, other's affairs. Privacy is to a very great extent a thing of the past. “An Englishman’s house is his castle,'’ but in these days of hotels, flats and apartments his life is much more subject to public scrutiny than it used to be. And, in consequence, perhaps, as “appetite comes with eating,” the public has been imbued with a keen interest in personalia, which is ministered to in many ways. Newspapers record the sayings and doings of the great, the “near great,” and others

whose claim to either description is not apparent. There are periodicals devoted exclusively to personal chit-chat, purveving such choice morsels ot information as the favourite breakfast dish of an eminent statesman, or the views on the problem of exchange held by an idol of the movies. A symptom ot the same tendency is the vogue of the inter view, ;i feuturo of eoiitenipoiiu \ jouninlism which dotes 'back less than a. generation. A new literary medium has been evolved, the personal sketch, which is now firmly established in the Press, and which writers of the highest standing cultivate. All this is quite a modern development. Our ancestors may have been every whit as inquisitive as we are, but they had fewer opportunities of gratifying their cuiiositv. Moreover, there was a convention which ordained reticence. The eighteenth century “character,” which had many analogies to our “pen poitrait, ’" presented a type, not an individual . A man was decently buried before his admirers (or detractors) perpetrated his biography. It was legitimate to praise or condemn the public acts of the living, but to put them on the disserting table was regarded as bad taste. A century ago a statesmen, a sohliei, :i sailor, might possess a world-wide reputation, but as far as bis personality was concerned, he might remain, outside his own immediate circle, a shadowv figure. Now lie is screened and broadcast, and photographed and paragraphed, and made the victim of innumerable studies and appreciations, until he is a familiar object,to those who have never even seen him in the flesh. Our sires kept themselves to themselves, and respected each other s idiopynevacy; for better or worse \so have changed all that.