The Week in Review

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 16, 15 April 1908, Page 1

The Week in Review

“As you were,” pretty well sums up the Lading of Mr. Bisnop, S.M., in his report on the management of Te Oranga Home. The Education Department qomes in for a large share of blame, because of its sanctioning the flogging of girls, the cutting of their hair, and the Compelling of them to wear a grotesque "dress by way of punishment. 'Lne lady manager of the institution receives a mild censure for boxing the ears of a refractory inmate, though tffe main culpability appears to be placed upon the Department for allowing such a breach pf the regulations. But, with fine judicial touch, the Commissioner makes allowance for tne difficulties of the position; with generous hand he erases all the black marks, and with rosy colours depicts the splendid results that have been achieved in the “humanising” of degenerate and apparently irreclaimable girls. Applying tne old standard, “By their fruits shall ye know them,” tne disciplinary methods employed at Te Oranga must be held to be entirely justified. But, judged from the standpoint of humanitarian ethics, and of public sentiment, which is Mr. Bishop’s method, certain forms of punishment are condemned, theoretically, although it is admitted that the general results attained when these punishments were enforced have been excellent. In another aspect, the verdiet on the Department and the management is—“ Not guilty, but don’t flo it again!"

Some forms of punishment are wrong, Yet good results attend their sway; Thus I am right, and you are right, And all is right—talooral-lay! Tn his evident desire to be fair and judicial, Mr. Bishop lias produced a report whose main features are sentimentality and namby-pambyism. He would personally abo.iou corporal punishment, but leaves it with the Department to continue the practice, with safeguards. He believes “the public sentiment is opposed to” penal hair-cutting »at Te Oranga, though at tne same time he admits that “many people” will tinnk that results justify the “unusual course.” Why this tender regard for public sentiment? It is the public weal that has to be considered.

The grotesque “punishment dress” is the one thing which Mr. Bishop unreservedly condemns; but surely “many people,” if not most, will agree that this is a very harmless and, probably, very fiseful form of correction for girls, upon whom dread of ridicule, has a greater effect than corporal punishment. The dunce who is made to wear the fool’s cap in school is, similarly, more likely to have his disgrace borne in upon him by that symbol than by a sterner application to a spot far distant from his brains. Popular sentiment is, no doubt, strongly opposed to the corporal punishment of children; but popular practice approves of it. Wliat parent would hesitate to give a sound whacking to a son Or daughter found out in moral delinquency or open disooedience? Not one in a thousand. The great majority adhere to the dictum of Solomon—“He that Bpareth his rod hateth his son.” The Baine rule applies to refractory schoolchildren anil to various classes of juvenile delinquents. While practice thus gives the lie to sentiment in dealing ,with the faults of youth, why should there be any call for a relaxation of discipline iu the case of “hardened and Corrupted” girls, “who may be termed moral imbeciles,” and are “scarcely normal in intelligence?” (The phrases are those used by Mr. Bishop in describing knany of the inmates of Te Oranga

Home.) Are such creatures to be coddled ano pampered and implored to be good? And is their most flagrant delinquency only to be met by the pleading remark, “Please, don’t?” How many of the class described above will be reformed by such means? The State, standing “in loco parentis” to reformatory children, ought assuredly to have a parent’s disciplinary power. A reformatory institution without the means of enforcing discipline would be a screaming farce, and the result of its operations a dismal failure. Hence it will be well if the outcome of the inquiry should be to leave things at Te Oranga practically as they were. The wave of popular sentimentalism will subside, and common-sense will reassert its sway; the silly outcry against the Hon. Mr. Fowlds, who is nowise culpable, will die away, and Te Oranga will continue its useful and humanising work. “So mote it be!” Mr. Bishop’s recommendation that the law should be amended so as to allow of the indefinite detention of the unreclaimed inmates ought certainly to be carried into effect by Parliament.

The pother that has been raised over Te Oranga Home is illustrative of a development of illogical emotionalism that marks the present age. We are all for love, and gentleness and moral suasion —all, that is, excepting the prohibitionists, who are “stalwarts” in upholding the old reign of force! “Disarm! Disband! Abolish war!” cry the advocates of universal peace. “Do away with capital punishment, prisons, prison dress and harsh restraints upon liberty,” plead reformers of another school. “Abandon corporal punishment in schools and reformatory institutions,” say the more advanced humanitarians; “for, as all moral delinquency is the result of mental disease, the unfortunate victims should be treated curatively, rather than punitively. We have abolished the place of everlasting torment, without any shocking results to morality; why not also abolish the minor grades of punishment meted out to evildoers in this life?” All this sounds very plausible - and appeals to the humanitarian instincts of good people who do not stop to think or to inquire into consequences. On reflection, everyone must admit the Reign of Force is not to be ended by Act of Parliament, Order-in-Council or resolution of a Peace Conference. To expect such a result is equivalent to expecting the cart to draw the horse. So long as human nature remains imperfect, so long must force be tire ultimate resort for the preservation of peace, law and order. The semi-bar-barous races would rejoice if civilised nations were to disarm and destroy their fortifications, since this would give the savage hordes an opportunity for conquest. "Messieurs les assassins” would lie glad to see capital punishment abolished; and schoolboys would have a jubilee if the masters were forbidden to birch them for misconduct. But the lion and the lamb can only lie down together in peace when the lion has liad his teeth drawn and his claws dipped, and his appetite altered. As was said of old on the subject of capital punishment :

“We'll abolish hanging when you abolish murder!”

And only when youth is cured of folly and mischief and unruly liehaviour will the birch tree l>e uprooted. All restrictive and .punitive laws will disappear automatically when the necessity for their application ceases. In the meantime, the rod as a moral reformer has its distinct uses. There is a saying that “hanging and wiving go by destiny," end the gloss offered on this proverb by But-

ler in his “Hudibras” may well close these remarks: — “If matrimony and hanging go By Destiny, why not whipping too? What ined’cine else can cure the tits Of lovers when they lose their wits? Love Is a boy, by poets styled, Then spare the rod and spoil the child!” An effort is being made to elevate a somewhat dreary Drury drama into the region of heroism or high tragedy. Mr. Dixon, a contractor, has elected to go to prison for two months rather than obey an order of the Court to pay some £2O of back wages to an artisan he had employed at less than standard rates. The case is not without an element of hardship, for the wages were mutually agreed upon, and the employer was under the impression that he was employing an “improver,” and not a journeyman. It also seems that the journeyman’s conduct in suing for back wages was not of the most exalted kind, since he had received all the remuneration he had bargained for. He has, indeed, shown himself to be more exacting than Shylock, who only demanded his pound of flesh, as stipulated in the bond. But whatever grievance Mr. Dixon may have against his quondam employe, he has none at all against the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. He paid, cheerfully or otherwise, the penalty imposed under that statute for his breach of the award under which he was carrying on operations, and there the connection between his case and the arbitration law' ended. The subsequent development took the form of civil proceedings for the recovery of back wages; and as he contumaciously refused to obey the order made against him, he has very properly been imprisoned for contemnt of court.

There is not, therefore, a complete parallel between this case and that of the recalcitrant Blackball miners, who defy the Arbitration Court and refuse to pay the penalty inflicted by it. Mr. Dixon’s remedy was to appeal against the decision of the S.M. Court; but he elected not to adopt this coarse, and he suffers accordingly. Of course, the Blackball miners should be imprisoned for their defiance of the law equally with Mr. Dixon. If they are not, it will simply be for hick of prison accommodation. But to laud Mr. Dixon as a “village Hampden,” withstanding the- “little tyrant of his fields,” and in the same breath to condemn the miners as flagrant law-breakers, is most illogical. If the friends of the Drury contractor wish to relieve him from the hardship under which he suffers, they can obtain his immediate relief by raising the money to satisfy his debt. But no; they prefer (Mr. Massey and the rest), for political purposes, to make his case a handle for agitation against the Industrial Arbitration Act, oblivious of the fact that he is suffering, not for defiance of that statute, but for disobeying the ordinary process of the civil courts. It is safe to predict that there 'Till be no monument erected to the “village Hampden” of Drury.

The ery of “save the children” has more than one application. In addition to the high mortality caused by lack of knowledge in the feeding and nursing of infants, the loss of child-life by fire is very considerable. This week wo publish an account of the burning to death of a young child near Oxford, Canterbury, caused by its dress being ignited at an open fireplace. Some attention has lately been directed to this danger to child-life in Englund, where, last year, the appalling iiundier of 2500 children died from accidental burns. The ancient Ammonites, with their horrible religious ceremony of making children “pass through the fire” to appease their god, Moloch, never offered up such a holocaust as this. During last year, in Manchester alone, there wore ninety fatal cases of childburning—an average of nearly two a week. On one day in January last three inquests were held in that city on children who had been burnt to death; while

in Liverpool, during one week of the same month, eight children lost their lives through burns. The Southwark coroner stated on January 7th that he had cases coming to him daily of children being burnt to death, and “in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred it is safe to say' that it is duo to there being no fire-guard." As children are the most valuable national asset, it is urged that the use of fire-guards should be made compulsory, and that municipal authorities should hire them to parents who are too poor to buy them, so that “this awful infant tribute to carelessness, callousness, or poverty,” as the St. Helen’s coroner calls it, should cease to be paid. Although the annual offering of children to the fire-god in our Dominion is comparatively small, it is painful to contemplate the avoidable loss and suffering inflicted by fires through the absence of fire-guards in dwellings, and the habit of clothing children in highly inflammable material. The plea of poverty cannot excuse New Zealand parents, and they ought to adopt such precautions as will acquit them of the charge of callousness or carelessness.

Now that it has ben definitely decided that the great “Peace Squadron" of American w'arships shall visit Auckland, it is to be expected that there will be a revival of Anglo-American enthusiasm throughout the Dominion, with the usual “high falutin’ ” talk about the coming confederation of the Anglo-Saxon nations, and their peaceful domination of the world. “Peace in her vineyard; yes, but” —America has just voted about six and a-half millions sterling to increase her standing army and add to her means of offence and defence, in addition to her annual military' expenditure of £25,000,000, According to accepted ideas, this is the true way to secure peace, just as the great display of naval strength now being made is the best means of preventing Japan from making a hostile descent on America. No doubt an effort will be made to have part of the British Australasian squadron in the Waitemata harbour at the time of the visit of the American fleet, so that the fraternising of the officers and men with their Yankee cousins may emphasise the “entente” and prove to the world that Great Britain and America are able to keep the peace in the Pacific Ocean.

There is sure to be much discussion as to how we may best cater for the entertainment of our guests. Why not put a choir of a thousand voices in training to sing “The Anglo -Murkan National Anthem?” An effusion under this title, which appeared in the Sydney “Bulletin” a few years ago, wound up with a statement that “Brityankia rules the waves," while its chorus ran as follows: — “Three cheers for Bullanjonathan! Hurrah for Johnansam! The Anglomurkan nation Is bound to lick creation! Geewhillikins! Tarnation! Goldarn I and likewise D——! ” Joking apart, the visit of the American fleet to Now Zealand waters will be a great historic and memorable event, and no pains should be spared by the Government of the Dominion, ami by the leading citizens of Auckland, in collaboration, to arrange for a round of entertainments and sightseeing that will ini” press our visitors with a sense of oi fraternal goodwill, as well as with ths resources and attractions of the Dominion. It is easy to overdo the “geyser” and “noble almriginal” business, however. America has her Red Indians and her Yellowstone Park, and she had claimed the title of “God’s own country” before Bracken appropriated it for New Zealand. But we may well indulge in “spread-eagleism” over our natural resources, our splendid hunting and fishing, and the attractions which this country offers to the intelligent farmer and enterprising trader, as well as to the plea-sure-seeker. Brother Jonathan, unlike John Bull, is inured to “tall talk,” and is not likely to find fault with us for our habit of “blowing.”