THE UNDESIRABLE ASIATIC

 A NATAL PEN PICTURE

(BY W A. SQUIRE.)

Natal, the garden colony, since the latter sixties, has encouraged and aided the importation of some of the lowest specimens of humanity from the teeming bazaars of India. Outcasts in all senses of the word without a habitation, and with no country to call his own, he is now knocking with grimy barbarian fingers at the door of civilisation demanding equal rights with British South Africans.

 The master men in the garden blest,

 Loved the white man well but the black man best.

 The colony of Natal is nearly half populated by Indians of the lowest type, controlled by savage instincts and subject to the most infamous of criminal impulses. The statisticians have lost count of the number the colony holds, and cannot find means to-morrow to trace or identify those it has publicly examined to-day. Criminals are at large, and uncontrolled disease is being spread to a degree that has at length caused the authorities to hasten to the aid of the Chief Health Officer of the colony.

 The arrest of seven Indians in Pretoria and Mr. Ghandi and five of his wealthy followers in Johannesburg marks a break in the continuity of the policy of drift into which the Asiatic problem has been allowed to drift in the past. The Transvaal has been brought face to face with the fact that the lip loyalty of the Indian coolie is a dangerous matter to accept, and that, beneath the oily subservience and cringing exhibition of Baboo-English jingoism that impelled Mr. Ghandi to seek a bubble reputation by organising a useless corps of Indian stretcher-bearers for General Buller's army corps, lie the ill-expressed aspirations to equal rights with civilised British subjects. It is like linking the barbaric Dravidian priest who sat his midnight vigil in the heights of the Himalayas to the frock-coated legislator in his seat beneath the clock at Westminster. Oil and water do not mix, and no country has yet been successful that let a majority of individuals rule a maximum of brains.

 The Transvaal calls upon all Indians in their boundaries, some 12,000, to register their names, and for purposes of identification leave their fingerprints with the Indian Immigration office. The Chinese mine coolies do not come into question, the system of identification so far as they are concerned is completed before they leave China. To fully appreciate the position, it must be thoroughly understood that the system of census taking throughout South Africa has been a very incomplete and thoroughly ineffectual one. Indian coolies of the lowest criminal castes, or of no caste at all, after terminating their articles of indenture in the tea or sugar plantations or coal mines of Natal, have crossed the border at Charlestown, and settled in the Transvaal towns, without the slightest possibility of the authorities discovering  their whereabouts should they or their friends, for any reason, of crime, wish to conceal them. The Indian merchant has control of the whole of the native trade. The Kafir prefers the Banyian storekeeper, who is of his colour, and but little above himself as to habits, to the European, some of whom he has, unfortunately, learned to distrust. These Indians have accumulated large landed possessions, and much wealth, and have been admitted far too much liberty in Natal. The Transvaal does not wish to repeat evils that to-day convert Natal into a questionable white colony. The seeds of sedition sown by natives in the stores of the Indian must, so far as the Transvaal Government is concerned, fall on barren soil, and the Botha Government has faced the question none too soon. How far the colony can demand fellow British subjects to submit to conditions of colonisation that amount to class legislation is a matter, that will in all probability be faced by the Colonial Office and the British Cabinet. The arrest of the ringleader, Mr. Ghandi, has brought about the climax. In any event, however, it will be found that with such horror does the Transvaal view the encroachment of the Asiatic, and the overrunning of its cities, towns, and villages with the scum of India, that measures of the greatest importance will be adopted and carried into force in face of any Anglo-Indian opposition that may be organised. The Asiatic sore now festering on the face of Natal can never be healed, but the infection may be prevented from spreading across the Drakenberg along the high veldt of the Transvaal.

 Mr. Ghandi, a Parsee barrister-at-law, is the leader of the South African Indian progressive movement. His ideas of black and white equality, and the brotherhood and fellowship of all British subjects, are founded upon effete and decayed notions, promulgated by Max Muller, and long ago discarded by scientists. The Indian coolie, in South Africa, whose battle is being fought by Mr. Ghandi, is a descendant of the Drairdian, who, with a spoonful of brains, hid in terror from the cave bear and tiger in the rock slopes of the Himalayas, what time the earth was young, and Israel had not evolved a prophet. Mr. Ghandi wishes to take him from his fetid slime, enlarge his pigmy brain by Act of Legislature and place him proudly upon a pedestal in equal footing with "the heir of all the ages," a dual monument of his own cupidity and oily jingo flag-wagging. "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." Yes, better even the native we know and can regulate as a savage and hold dominion over as an inferior than a horde of barbarian, evil, disease-spreading Asiatics, who claim the protection of the British flag as a means for the pollution of other colonies, and defy authority in scorn of consequences from a misapplied idea of martyrdom to the cause of Empire. Mr. Ghandi, from his self-elected position of South African dictator of laws, has disregarded the mandate that the developed brains of Europeans must of necessity dominate over the barbaric and semi-civilised intelligence of the undesirable Asiatic.

Australian Star (Sydney, NSW ), 18 January 1908 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article229926483

THE ABORIGINES.

 There was lately published, in the proceedings of the Diocesan Assembly, an able paper on the state of the Aborigines, and the best means to be adopted for their preservation. On this subject Mr. RUSDEN is a good authority, as he has devoted much attention to it. We cannot, however, agree with him in every part of his proposed system, though, on the whole, it is an immense improvement upon any plan hitherto adopted.

The question is, can any of the aboriginal tribes, or their children, be civilised and if they can be, can they be altogether, or only partially ? It is most important that we should get correct information on this point, for otherwise our efforts would be sure to be misdirected. We will throw what light we can upon the subject, in the hope that it will assist in guiding in the right path those who take a kindly interest in the native population.

Can the adult natives be civilised ? To answer this question satisfactorily we should understand what, with regard to them, would be called a civilised state. If it means the implanting of Christianity, and the settled habits of their European brethren, we answer in the negative. This experiment has been tried most fully at Wellington Valley, in New South Wales. At the missionary establishment there neither money nor labour was spared to effect that desired object. There were gardens, cultivation fields, huts, schools; everything to interest and elevate and the whole under the zealous care of the Rev. Mr. THRELKELD. It was soon found that nothing could cure the wandering habits of the adults, but it was hoped that, by keeping the children at school, and separating them from their tribes, they, at least, would be rescued from the savage State. They made good progress in reading, and were well up in Scripture history and the principles of Christianity ; but as soon as they arrived at puberty nothing could keep them from returning to the free and wild life of their tribes, and, after a patient trial of some fifteen years, Mr. THRELKELD was obliged to write, with sorrow and regret, that the experiment was a total failure, and to recommend the abandonment of a scheme which brought as its fruits only expense and disappointment. We might also question the numberless instances in which native children have been brought up in the families of settlers, and treated in every respect as one of their own. In no instance has the original nature been overcome : they all had their fits of wandering, and nothing could stop them. It is unnecessary to accumulate evidence on this point. It is sufficient to say that wherever it has been tried the experiment has failed. Nor has the attempt to instil religious knowledge in their minds been attended with more satisfactory results : all is forgotten the moment they resume their wandering habits. We assert, therefore, that all attempts to civilise or evangelise the adult blacks must fail.

Can nothing, then, be done to ameliorate the condition of the native races, and save any remnant from the fate which is so rapidly overtaking them ? We think much may be done. We believe that if there was an establishment formed near some port — say Melbourne or Geelong —to which native children should, when practicable, be brought, so as to be entirely removed from intercourse with their parents, a permanent good would be done. In the case of pure-bred children, it would be necessary to obtain the consent not only of the parents, but of the tribe, for their removal to their new home, and to insist that they were not to attempt to take them away for a certain number of seasons. Presents should be given on the occasion, and the transaction made as impressive as possible. But in the case of the half-castes, we think more stringent measures might be adopted. Were there no other reason than the well known fact that a male half-caste child rarely is permitted to pass his tenth or twelfth year, we think Government is bound to rescue them from their almost certain fate. But, moreover, these children may be said to be abandoned by their white fathers, and on that ground the State may step in and act as their guardians. In some parts of the interior the half-caste children are numerous, and it is melancholy to reflect that such fine and intelligent lads should be doomed to an early death. As for the half-caste girls, they grow up to become the women of the neighbouring tribes, and ill-usage and exposure never fail to bring them to early graves. In the case of the half-castes, therefore, we would have the State step in and take these children away from an early age. We would have them placed in an asylum close to the sea. We would have the boys receive a fair education, and, in fact, have them brought up as the children of Christian parents. We would also bring them up for the sea, as a pursuit in which they will be more likely to do well than any other. Where they have been tried they make excellent sailors, and are remarkable for their acuteness of sight. A small vessel should be attached to the establishment, in which they should be exercised and taught their trade, and in due time they can be advantageously placed. In this way we should reclaim a number of beings and wear a valuable body of men; whose services to the colony would alone repay the cost and labour bestowed on them. They should be a garden attached to the building in which the boys might be made to work, as far as weeding and keeping it in order. But it would be futile to attempt to teach them agriculture, or indeed any ordinary trade as there would be little chance of their following them when thrown on their own hands. But the pursuit of the sea is more congenial to their nature, and there would be small chance of their abandoning it. For the girls, they should be also plainly educated, and brought up expressly for domestic service. They are very " neat-handed," attentive, cheerful, and teachable, and very kind to children. There could be the means of teaching them all the branches of domestic duties; and it is possible that by their sewing they might help to pay the expenses of the establishment. That, however, is a secondary consideration.

The fallacious part of Mr. RUSDEN'S plan is the proposal to have the children located in their own districts, where communication with their tribes would be easy, and indeed inevitable; and, being thus broken up into small bodies, it would be impossible to attend to their education, and remove them from the influences of those habits from which we would wean them. In fact we should fail, in part if not wholly, and our objects be defeated. To succeed, we must remove these children so far from their native haunts that their tribes would be unlikely to attempt to visit them ; or if they did so, it would be so rarely that very soon the children would forget their language, and lose all sympathy with them. That result is the great element of success in the plan we propose.

With respect to the black children, we should follow the same mode of education, according to sex, as we would with the half-castes. But their case is more difficult to manage than the latter. They cannot be taken away forcibly from their tribes; and if we accept the charge of them with conditions, those conditions must be observed. All that we can do when they are yielded to our care is to exact that they shall not be taken away before a certain number of years. The best chance for the children is, that by that time those who have a right to exercise a control over them will be dead, when our own authority may be still further extended. In no other way need we hope for any success and by the plan we suggest, we believe we should attain it, and thus save a remnant of a fast expiring people.

While upon the subject, we will touch briefly upon the causes of the rapid disappearance of the natives. Some years ago an idea prevailed that there was something mysterious in the causes which led to the disappearance of the savage tribes before the foot of the white man. Nothing, however, can be more natural than such a result. As soon as a district becomes settled, nearly all the young men of the tribes belonging to that tract of country attach themselves to the different stations. There they are regularly fed, and warmly clad, and they remain with the whites, perhaps, for two or three months. Then a number of their tribe passing, they must go and join them ; they throw off their clothes, and expose themselves to all the changes of weather they are sure to encounter. This brings on pulmonary disease, and consumption is one of the most frequent causes of death among the young men of the tribes. Among the women these causes do not operate so powerfully, as they are not so much exposed to sudden changes of habits. But their mode of life is fatal to the increase of their race. As a rule, the young girls rarely have more than one child, —numbers of them never bear children at all. This is chiefly to be attributed to the constant intercourse and connection kept up among themselves as well as the whites. Constant smoking and getting drunk on every occasion that offers itself, no doubt, assists to check their natural increase, but the first mentioned is the chief cause of their barrenness. And thus, while most of them die when still young, the numbers remaining to take their places are reduced more and more each year, till at last a unit will express the strength of a tribe which only a few years since may have consisted of many hundreds. And so they will continue to diminish, till not one of a kindly race remains, unless the State steps in to rescue them from total extinction.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. 1857,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article7132790

THREE MORALITIES

 By  David Einhorn

When one goes to measure with a "moral yardstick" the events of our sinful and chaotic times, one finds that there are three kinds of measures: a Jewish, a Christian and a Gentile.

I call "Gentiles" all those who believe in power and interests; be it national, party, church or class interests. I also want to emphasise that, when I say Jewish, Christian or Gentile, I don't mean especially, Jews, Christians 'and Gentiles. Because there are many Jews, even orthodox Jews, who use the Gentile yardstick, and there are Christians who employ the Jewish measure and Jews using the Christian meter. Gentiles, as a rule, use only their own measure.

The Jewish morality is a morality of justice. It is, par excellence, an earthly one. It is a law, a "must," whosoever breaks the laws of morality must receive punishment, or will in the end be punished. The morality of Judaism teaches us to love our neighbour and friend as we love ourselves. Hillel has formulated it in one phrase: "You shall not do to others that which you don't want others to do unto yourself." We are commanded not to steal, not to misconduct ourselves with the wives of others, not to commit robbery, not to bear false witness, not to covet what belongs to others. Morality of Judaism does not put to men unnatural demands as does Christianity. Our morality is not a heavenly one. The Talmud teaches not to introduce a law which the majority of the people has not approved. Nobody is allowed the special right to break the laws of justice. Everybody is bound to fight with all his strength against those who defy justice.

The Christian morality is a supernatural, a heavenly one. It is more a wish than a law. While Jewish morality demands that you love your neighbour like yourself, the Christian morality commands to love your enemy like yourself. When Judaism demands opposition and fight against stealing, robbery, against the power of the mighty, Christianity teaches to turn the left cheek after one has been struck on the right, to give up the shirt after one has been deprived of his coat. Be good yourself, but don't oppose evil! Christian morality leaves justice in the hands of God. In the other world the evil ones will be punished, and the good ones—for the injustices suffered and pains endured—will sit on the right side of Jesus.

The Gentile, so called, morality states that might is right, and that the end justifies the means and deeds. Decency behoves only the individual, the country, the party, the nation as a whole; the collective stands above morality. If the interests of the country, nation or party demand it—the higher institutions who look after the welfare of the collective may commit all crimes and injustices, robbery and murder included. And strangely, when we look at the present day events of our valley of despair, we observe how very frequently the Christian and Gentile moralities run parallel, how the stronger, the immoral, the man of might abuses the Christian passivity and idealism for his own purposes. The saying of the apostle Paul: "For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.”—(Romans, 13)—leads, in a direct line to the declaration of the German reformer, Martin Luther, that the “common man” must be subjected to his magistrates and he must not oppose the powers, even if they commit all mortal sins and break all moral laws. Because it is a matter for God to punish. The subject must be obedient! No wonder the Nazis boasted that Luther was their first member. Lutheranism was responsible for the blind obedience of the Prussians, and the committal of all crimes, when ordered to do so by their superiors. "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye service, as men pleasers; but in singleness of heart, bearing God”—(Colossians, 3). "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour . . . and they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit"—(Timothy, 1:6). That passivity, that voluntary resignation of human rights on earth for the future life, gave justification to the whole system of slavery of the peasants to their masters in the feudal Middle Ages. In one word the heavenly morality of the Christians served very well all tyrants, barons, counts, and rulers, all the mighty and dictators that themselves did not believe in Christian morality but in the Gentile creed that might is right. They could not have accepted Jewish teaching that condemns slavery as an injustice and prohibits the return of a slave that ran away from his master.

Strangely enough the two extremes meet very frequently in the fields of politics. The Christian principle of forgiveness dictates: Pardon the thief and the robber, give up your shirt. The principle of Gentile morality says: When one needs the criminal one takes him off the gallows. The result is that the thief remains unpunished by both!

We witness this phenomenon in relation to Germany and in the whole post-war political course. In relation to the German world murderers, robbers and despoilers both have united. The Christians preach: Forgiveness is the greatest virtue. Love your enemy. Therefore, we must forget the horror and crimes committed by the Germans in the past half century; the two world massacres that they initiated, the moral and material ruin that they brought on the world, the millions of innocent people that perished in fire, by the sword, through torture and slavery. According to the Gentiles: (a) The Russian Communist rules say forgive them, because with their help we will destroy the capitalist democracy and introduce communism in the world. (b) The Socialists say forgive them and they will become true Socialists. (c) The democratic countries say forgive, for they will serve as a barrier against the Russian impetus to dominate the world, besides one cannot rebuild Europe without German labour and enterprise. What all actually mean to say is, that when one needs the criminal one takes him off the gallows. None can comprehend that a robber must receive punishment that he ought not and must not be made strong again to go for the third time on a murder spree. All have forgotten that after the first German-made world war the devout Christians and the capitalists, together with the socialists and communists, helped to rebuild the German war potential, which later brought a still greater ruin on the world.

To the group of Christian moralists belong some real idealists, nice and decent people, but their morality is a heavenly one blind to earthly realities. Our Talmudic teachers had a name for that kind of moralists, they called them Fool Desciples (Chasid shote). Such a Desciple fool is the devout man who won't save a drowning woman because one must not look at a naked woman. Such Fool Desciples were the pacifists who propagated disarmament in France, Britain, and America while all the parties of the so called Weimar Republic armed themselves secretly, and helped to build up the German murder machine. Indeed, the same Republican Parties which in their own country brutally suppressed  all pacifists, always supported them in other countries. The famous German pacifist, Foerster, states that Kaiser Wilhelm's government did not prosecute him so intensely as the Weimar Republic. And to this day, his name is despised by all Germans, communists, socialists, protestants and catholics. All countries that arm themselves and believe in power politics prosecute the pacifists in their own and support pacifism in other lands. That means that pacifists in threatened countries are Fool Desciples of the sort of morals of the Christians that preach non-resistance to evil and to turn the left cheek. The result is that the one who smacks the face is encouraged to smack again; the robber gets a bigger appetite for robbery and the murderer for murder.

We see that over and over again. The Communists and Fascists in the democratic countries, whose avowed aim is to destroy Democracy, raise a cry, every time they receive a rebuff, that democratic principles have been violated. Russia, that arms herself up to the teeth and keeps the flame of militaristic spirit alive among her peoples, supports and acclaims every pacifist in America who preaches disarmament.  Those pacifists, Desciples' Fools, are like people who want to abolish Police, notwithstanding the fact that armed hold-ups take place and gangster bands are active. Such a Desciple Fool is H. Wallace, who believes that America should disarm and give Russia a say in the disposal of the millions of dollars Marshal Aid Plan.

If Morality is not only a wish, if Morality is a law of international justice and whoever breaks it must receive his due punishment, because it is a world law, then forgiveness for the offenders won't help. That is a principle of Jewish Morality. And may the Germans now lift their eyes to heaven and cry that Baruch and Morgentau are only personifications of the Old Testament lust for revenge; and may Communists, Socialists, and capitalist politicians,  together with Christian moralists, preach forgiveness for the Germans, it won't help! If they allow Germany to regain her strength they will be forced to destroy her again.

That is Jewish Morality—the Morality of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos. All men must not only themselves be just, honest and decent, but also oppose all injustice, battle against it and not acquiesce in it, no matter if committed by individual, party or nation. The power was not given of God; it is derived from the people and all individuals in the nation are responsible for it. The country and the collective are just as responsible to the laws of Morality as is the individual and there is no such collective or power that can put itself above justice. And that must be the only measure applicable to the events of our days if we want clarity and if we want to emerge from the moral swamp that has engulfed the world.

Translated from Yiddish for the Forum, by P.B. (Sydney).

Australian Jewish Forum ( NSW. ), 1948, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article266821096

ETHICS AND MORALS IN PRESENT-DAY AMERICA

 By S. Parkes Cadman, D.D. of New York

THE responsibility for the widespread ethical disturbance in the United States rests primarily upon the older generation. If youth, as some educators assert, is in open rebellion against conventional standards of conduct, the revolt is due in large measure to the adult mental activities of the past forty years. The two chief sanctions of ethics religion and public opinion, exercised a muted and undisputed control until 1880. An unquestioned acceptance of the Bible as the literally inspired Word, and of its teachings as final for matters of faith and conduct was then universal. The social code of a feudal rather than an industrial age obtained; woman's place in Church and State had been stationary for a prolonged period. Since that era of innocence the ideals and codes regulating personal and social behaviour have been subjected to severe criticism.

The Churches are chiefly called upon to account for the social disintegration and to work out a readjustment between those codes and ideals and the twentieth century environment. Naturally the older groups resent these changes and deny their implications. But the younger groups demand them, and stress the need of a revaluation of moral standards. They have received academic training in enormously increased numbers, not all of which is in sympathy with the ruling ideas of their elders. Protestantism's insistence upon individual interpretation of Holy Scripture and freedom of thought concerning its teachings, hastened the decline of its rigid authority in morals.

The approach to religion through historic critical, and psychological methods, and the attention given to non-Christian faiths also impaired the Biblical sanction of Ethics.

EXPERIMENTING YOUTH

Anthropology has contributed to this impairment. High School and College students note the marked variations of ethical codes, and that these have been moulded by social and economic environments. The net result of numerous contributory causes is that a quotation from Holy Scripture, especially from the Old Testament, is no longer necessarily confirmatory of conduct for the youth of America. Sex relations, the family, parental governance, and kindred issues are affected by these changes. Philosophies which stress the lack of eternal ideas, and the constant flux of being, bring the lasting validity of any code within the zone of attack. Pragmatism is well to the fore in some applications its authors scarcely anticipated. The proposition that if a course of life works it is permissible is easily transmuted into the propriety of getting what seems desirable, if getting it is possible.

In any case, experimentalism is the favourite creed of youth. It is practised and catered for to a degree which would have been inconceivable a generation ago. Its chief exponent is Professor John Dewey of Columbia University, New York City, the first American thinker who clearly saw the bearing of the theory of evolution on morals, and has taken it with utter seriousness. His ethics are mundane. Their material is obtained from education, social, philosophy, and physchology. Thinking with Dr. Dewey is purely instrumental, and logic subordinate to ethics, as he understands them. He defines truth as that which we can achieve, and any process of thought as true only because it functions truly in obtaining what it sets out to obtain. Reason with him is a subsidiary gesture, since man in spite of all illusion of wounded desire, is only an animal; yet one capable of continuous development, and therefore, equally incapable of attaining a fixed ethic. Hence any law which prescribes duty or oughtness for life is false, because there is no such reality.

Transcendental ethics fall under this exclusion, and those who advocate them betray ignorance of things as they are. In brief, superior and changeless laws imposing indefeasible obligations upon humanity simply do not exist. Dr. Dewey admits that the generally accepted moral code may be valid in a particular instance. But he contends that it cannot apply in other instances. For him every moral situation is unique. It follows that all rival philosophies, the ruling concept of which is one great end for life and conduct, are founded on a fallacy.

REIGN OF SCIENCE

Plainly in this teaching science is the only technique for attaining good life, and its morals consist in using the means at our disposal for the satisfaction of its demands. The chief possible benefit for humanity is its expression of all its capacities in a world to he taken as it is found, and without setting up a final goal. Freedom, therefore, is the ability to do what one wants to do, and this ability must be developed by one's knowledge of the laws of nature and of the dispositions of one's fellow men. Two requirements only are needed in order to be a moral person: (1) Intelligence, by which is meant the power to forecast the results of scientific laws; (2) Sympathy to perceive ahead the effect of one's conduct on others. Dr. Dewey's philosophical and scientific ideas have been popularised by the remarkable sale of books such as Durant's Story of Philosophy and Dorsey's Why We Behave Like Human Beings, the majority of which are written from naturalistic level. They dwell upon the fluidity of life, and argue that by changing environment we can change human nature.

The influence of relativity is felt in their pet idea that group opinion makes morality. What we deem the eternal verities of right and wrong are thus pronounced vulnerable. The younger generation has a religion, but it is nebulous. It issues no specific commands covering conduct. Right apparently depends on conditions, and not on eternal law. When the older generation forbids a thing as wrong, youth is apt to ask why it is wrong. The first sufficient answer is to convince the questioner that certain lines of conduct are, or are not, conductive to individual or social good.

We are here confronted by a condition and not a theory. Christian men and women are asking why this decay of belief in Biblical teaching, this loss of religion sanction for ethics, this popularity of Freudian sex psychology? They complain that the new knowledge has shaken traditional family morality. The economic independence of women, their dress and demeanour, the free use of the motor car, the passing of the chaperone and the practice of contraception would seem to need salutary superintendence. Youth also reads our past in the light of the World War, and accuses us of not being true to our loftiest professions. Its attitude is one of doubt and disillusionment.

Its peril is that too many young people are the victims of a confusion of values for which their predecessors are in part responsible. American parents have been too deeply engaged in money-making and social pleasure to administer domestic discipline in wisdom. What is called education frequently omits the hard and the high. It is selfishly flabby, a poor substitute for the extensive breakdown of home training. Indeed, the background of the American home patterned on the English and Dutch model has been heavily obscured in recent years, especially in cities flushed with temporal pursuits and profits.

The authors I have named are not of equal merit. Some are no more than echoes of one or two prevailing voices. But all assumes a self-regulated concrete universe for which secularism is the living air. The spiritual element in morals is either denied or passed over as an insoluble enigma. Prevalent ethical formulas are traced to primitive thinking in which romanticism predominates. We are warned that the time is near when individuals who have to make decisions about conduct will desert priests, parsons, and melodramatic revivalists for scientific experts whose directions are based upon ascertained facts and not imaginary concepts and whose trinity of ethics is centred in Freedom, Responsibility, and Knowledge.

GERM PLASM AND THE ETERNAL

True, we are consoled by the reminder that theological dogmas may reduce the strife between the flesh and spirit for the moment, and so render first aid to a bedevilled world. But the censure at once follows that they are ultimately productive of childish experiments which benumb brain and conscience. A second category of opinions resorts to chemical affinity for the solution of the problem, and regards the human mind as nothing more than an agent in the biological adjustments which that affinity affects. The powers of eager upward living, it is said, are not due to Deity, but to the germ plasm. The further release and use of atomic energy is at least co-ordinate in rank with conventional ethical and religious beliefs.

These assumptions are rejected by other scientific thinkers as altogether unwarranted. Their onslaughts upon normal morality have not touched the heart of the nation, which is still sufficiently Puritan to enact Prohibition, and put an actress in an indecent play in jail. They will what they call the actual but too often achieve the fantastic, or the unclean. Some of these leaders of the forces of anti-Christian morality are the prisoners of their own culture, and cannot conceive of any other. They freeze the enthusiasm of the youth which heeds them, and make it cynical rather than candid. The ironic complacency with which they condemn the Church and the Gospel as injurious to morals is ludicrous in view of the fact that however indifferent the masses may be to Biblical religion, they are practically unanimous in their support of its historic standards of conduct.

Fortunately, the American people have a lively sense of humour. Their laughter frequently unifies society better than the scholar's logic or the politician's plans. They still steadfastly believe that faith in an eternal and an objective morality is the solely sufficient barrier against sex anarchy and its destruction. The germ plasm has its mission, so has the evolutionary theory, and much else that goes with them. But my fellow citizens cannot be convinced that these things transfer man from the perishable to the imperishable, or account for his higher self and wisest preferences.

Nevertheless, the homelife of the nation has to be reconsidered and protected. Within its unit, as Aristotle said, social order, affection, and obedience were first generated. To it we look with an intensity born of recent experience for the social integrity and conservation underlying the general welfare. For these reasons the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America has appointed a large and representative Committee to investigate the entire question of marriage and divorce.

Their review will include everything obtainable which is relative to the problem. Its bearing upon the child life is to be emphasied. As perhaps you know, the United States has an unenviable notoriety in this matter, and now leads the world in the number of needless divorces. A uniform marriage law is probably the outstanding statutory reform needed by the nation; nor can it, in my judgment, be much longer postponed without grave risk to the national morality.

BEAUTY AND MORALITY

It has been suggested that a positive programme for the strengthening of moral standards will ally them with beauty. The dullness, drabness, and aesthetic stupidity, too often associated with the "safe" ways of living has made them flat and insipid to millions of young people. It is proposed to substitute what is lovely, courteous, and attractive for what is ugly, rude and repellent in the old right-and-wrong division. The hedonism which simply hardens with years into prudence, we are told, is unendurably boring. Since our age is analogous to the Greek period in its love of physical development, of physical frankness, and its freedom from sentimentalism, it seems reasonable to some that the love of beauty which animated the Greeks might do much for us.

Small beginnings are being made in this direction. There are gratifying improvements in art, architecture, interior decoration, and a keen relish for spiritual adventure in matters of taste and form.  Better still, the city slum, the cogwheel in the machinery of immorality, is on the decline. Beauty in conduct is suggested by hatred of cheapness and love of good, sportsmanship. Theft, covetousness, and wanton violations of another's personality are ugly things which do not belong to the grace and charms by which life must be shaped.

Certainly the Puritanism of the future will not stress ugliness as an accompaniment of holiness, nor be content with the doctrinal correctness of mundane minds whose moral squalor defiles life. Acts which are appropriate, appreciations which are magnanimous, pleasures which are free from the grossness must be made the norm.

While custom may not be the essence of morality, or the opinion of the group the sole criterion of right and wrong, they are powerful factors for determining in what directions to what ends, by what rules of behaviour and standards of judgment the individual's native impulses shall be shaped. Gregarious suggestiveness and imitativeness must be examined afresh by Christian teachers who would enforce the New Testament ethic. The advantages and disadvantages of custom in relation to that ethic are likewise important. For custom not only conserves co-operation and past social experience; it stimulates individual loyalty through the group conscience. Doubtless many customs are foolish, or harmful, or alien to progress. They do not provide for the solution of new moral problems, nor are they a sufficient stag against the uprush of strong passions. But they are to be used for the furtherance of those principles which experience demonstrates are indispensable to moral welfare.

Four great forces will have to be studied in our reorganisation of ethical teaching under the authority of the New Testament. (1) Scientific Rationalism, which reflects the claim of any institution to circumscribe the limits within which human mind may operate. We are bound to show that Christianity's supernatural system of ethics is not only religion but reason, and the highest reason, transcending man's capacity for the good, and his strength to attain it apart from the virtue which is in Christ. (2) The New Humanism, which inculcates the idea that a good life consists in the development, and enjoyment of human powers in the material world, and in perfecting of man's capacities here on earth through intellectual culture. (3) The distinction between secular and sacred occupations, which was broken when the Protestant Reformation substituted the democratic community for the hierarchy, and industrialism was introduced as a service rendered to God and man. (4) The relation of industrialism to plutocratic feudalism, and the resultant organisations of labour. These movements carry with them grave moral dangers, some loss of the sense of personal responsibility and initiative, and the increasing despotism of class feeling and mass prejudice.

BASES OF AMERICAN MORALITY

I venture the affirmation that despite the antagonisms I have mentioned, the prevailing estimate of morality by educated Americans is found in the prophets of Israel and the teachings of our Lord. The test of goodness for them is in the true self-realisation which contributes to the larger and enduring life of the individual and of society. In other words, they follow consciously or unconsciously the doctrine of idealists like Thomas Hill Green, Profesor Bradley, Seth, Sorley, and other thinkers. Professor Royce's excellent volume on Loyalty expresses the basic sentiments of the nation as a commonwealth of moral persons in which every member co-operates to realise the true ideal of humanity. This is not attainable; when severed from the spiritual realities which are the vital sources of moral action.

These realities involve the service of all human institutions and human culture as means for the fuller fruition of spiritual life in human beings present and to come. It is well for us to know that the social heritage in regard to conduct cannot be trifled with, and that social control will not only continue but increase as society grows more complex. It is also well for us to know that organised supervision of ethical standards is destined to remain, and that it is utterly futile for each individual to attempt to work out his own sex life and general behaviour through mere sense data supplied, by his limited experience.

But in the long last, the satiate condition and weariness which transgressions of moral law engender, and the spiritual hunger of human beings for a Higher Power which can subdue the baser to the nobler self, will drive men and women to the God of all righteousness revealed in Jesus Christ.

Observer (Adelaide,  1930,)  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article164810169

SOCIALISM. ITS LATEST PHASES.

AS PRESENTED BY E. BELFORT BAX.

Probably few persons, if any, will depute that Mr. E. B. Bax is one of the chief modern apostles of Socialism. Some persons, disposed to cultivate Socialistic sentiments, may not endorse all his views and opinions. There are diversities of sentiment and faith in the adherents of this aggressive movement ; there are moderates and extremists. Bax is not a moderate. He does not stop at "the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange." Not many will stop there ; it is an easy stage, a convenient temporary halting place. Lassalle and Marx put their objective temperately ; "Social combination of common labour for production, in which it would be requisite to abolish the individual capital of society and to distribute the result of production among all who have contributed to it, in proportion to their performance." This is the instalment now being presented to Australians. But it is not Tom Mann's ulterior object, nor Keir Hardie's. Nor Belfort Bax's.

BAX'S ULTERIOR OBJECTIVE.

Last year Ernest B. Bax published a series of "Essays in Socialism New and Old." It will be wise for us to study the new Socialism propounded in this book. Being so recently from the press it may be assumed to contain the matured sentiments of its author, who had previously given his expositions of this modern social renovating force in separate volumes, intituled, "The Religion of Socialism" and "The Ethics of Socialism."

When advocates of Socialism in our own State are agitating for a drastic alteration in the conditions of our social industrial and political life, are striving to adapt to their aims the constitution on which our Parliamentary practice rests, and to use our adult suffrage to acquire predominance in our State politics, it may be opportune to examine this elaborate declaration, by a recognised authority of the aims and objects of the advanced section of Socialists.

WOMAN'S INTEREST IN SOCIALISM.

Now that our women have an equal suffrage with men, it is urgently necessary that they should recognise the effect which a realisation of Socialistic ideals would have on them, and that they should be well informed on the ultimate objects of those extremists who flaunt the red banner of Socialism in the faces of the whole people. Some classes of women will be vitally affected should wild theories solidify into hard facts. Those of them who have the misfortune to be wedded to indolent, improvident, or inebriate husbands will be losers rather than gainers should work be lighter and wages heavier. That too large a proportion of human beings are lazy, incapable, dissipated, or dishonest is undeniable. While that remains so there is no moral basis for collectivism. The whole scheme of collective income and disbursement overlooks the obvious weaknesses of human nature, and it does not contain a single suggestion or proposition for the moral improvement of that nature.

Mr. E. Belfort Bax advances hypotheses and theories which, in practice would be calculated to be subversive of religious and moral habits and relations. He leaves individual character and personal conduct severely alone; it is a radical change in the social order which troubles him. He would make the fruit good whether the tree be good or not. But it is Utopian to postulate to general peace, comfort, felicity in circumstances which would set at defiance all the insistencies of common sense, and all the recognised ethics and elements of morality. To secure a better "service of humanity," a purer condition of social relations an elevation of mental and physical aims and pursuit, and a purer atmosphere of general home life, something is necessary besides money and the leisure to spend it. The moral self-restraint which will use both wisely will be needed.

A FORMULA FOR SOCIAL REFORM.

Let us look calmly at Bax's ethical propositions for the economical regeneration of humanity. Our scrutiny must not be too exacting. Let him have his say : 'Modern Socialism is based upon the principle that social systems are not made, but grow. It claims that the collective ownership and regulation of the means and instruments of production, distribution, and exchange, in the interests of all, will inaugurate a new period in the world's history in which the antagonisms between the individual and the community, together with the other embodied antagonisms of civilisation, shall have lost all meaning."

Undoubtedly a new era will be inaugurated should this beautiful optimistic and captivating idealism be realised. Many tries at it have been made ; none have permanently succeeded. For ages men have longed for an Arcadia of altruistic brother-hood. But mostly the diversity of human qualities, the incongruous mixture of gentleness and bullishness, of meekness and malice, of generosity and greediness, of self-restraint and self-indulgence, of sobriety and inebriety, of purity and foulness ; saying nothing of the meaner qualities, idleness, envy, jealousy, have tarnished the beauty, and frustrated the utility of the charming ideal. If the Socialists' paradise is simply an Utopia of unreformed people, it is an impracticable dream. So far from antagonisms decreasing, they would multiply, because rivalries of ability would augment and intensify ; ne'er-do-wells would become worse wastrels and more ill-disposed ; clever men would soon tire of receiving orders from and working for incapables ; sober men would not toil to share wages with idle fellows who boosed in working hours. Inequalities of ability and moral habits would soon produce inequalities of material conditions.

It has to be admitted that the formula, as a social postulate, is in accord with the theories of men in our own country. Most of them seem to be agreed about the collective ownership and regulation of the means and instruments of production, distribution, and exchange. Some of them assert this to be the limit of their Socialistic demands. All reformers would go thus far with Mr. Bax. But he does not stop there. An amendment of the conditions of work, an increase in the means of livelihood, do not satisfy him.

AN ATTACK ON RELIGION.

He attacks the Christian religion fiercely and persistently. He would sweep away all its inspiration and all its consolation. Seeing that some men ordained to the service and faith of this religion have been captivated by the economic formula already quoted, and are not backward in advocating the trusts, or aiding the methods of Socialism, it may not be amiss to invite their attention to Bax's sentiments on this subject:—"We not infrequently hear that the attack on the old theological systems, as enslaving the human mind to-day, is a matter with which we have no special concern. . . . Weakened though it has been, it would be rash to say that clericalism in the shape of theological dogma, has ceased to be a danger, and hence is no longer to be regarded as an active enemy. . . The popular attack on this evil may have been largely superseded by the weapons of modern science and witticism, and the direct onslaught has, so to say, taken the enemy in the rear."

Analyse this extract thus :—1. The human mind is alleged to be "enslaved to-day by old theological systems." 2. " Clericalism, in the shape of theological dogma, is a danger and an active enemy" to the new irreligious system which is to " inaugurate a new period in the world's history." 3. Besides being an enemy to " progressive" social reform, religion is an " evil" in itself. 4. Socialism is a " popular attack," and a " direct onslaught" on this "evil."

Mr. Bax goes on to say : " Let any Socialist agitator try and bring home the truths of Socialism to a body of persons possessed of any serious belief in theology, and he will soon have the necessity of taking up a determined attitude on those questions brought home to him. The practical good sense of Socialists, in such cases, generally gets the better of their rigid shibboleth, and their anti-theological attitude becomes as robust and aggressive as that of an old Voltairian." Here we have, according to Bax :—(1) The irreconciliable antagonism between Socialism and "belief in theology" ; (2) Any " serious" loyalty to theology forces the "Socialist agitator" into a "robust and aggressive anti-theological attitude" ; (3) When it comes to a fight the Socialist drops unction, and puts on "Voltairian" warpaint.

SOCIALISM AND RELIGION INCOMPATIBLE.

Mr. Bax proceeds: "The notion of maintaining that religion is a purely private matter, and that Socialism has no concern with it, if it be a pretence, is a dishonest farce, and if it is no pretence, must mean treachery to the party. . . . . It is, if nothing else, incompatible with the supernaturalism and with much of the ethics of the old religious systems." Here are the horns of a dilemma for those reverend gentlemen who are playing the " dishonest farce" of being trite to two discordant systems, which in Bax's opinion means treachery to one or the other. -But he is not strictly consistent, for whilst affirming the incompatibility of Socialism and supernaturalism he would permit any man to favour any plank of the Socialistic platform while remaining a strict Catholic, or Calvinist, or Jew, or Mohammedan. " Such aid," he says, " is not merely desirable or advantageous, but in the present position of affairs is, at least, in most countries absolutely essential to the formation of a Parliamentary Social Party."

At the expense of hypocrisy and "dishonest farce" Mr. Bax is tolerant ; nay, more, he is liberally lenient, so long as it suits party ends. He will use any man of any creed so long as that man's vote and influence will aid the formation of political Socialism, and its representation in Parliament. The supreme object is Socialism ; the subordinate thing is religion. In Parliament Socialism will be more effective than elsewhere, so Bax will accept the help of any victim of theological delusion who will, assist him in getting there, however disliked and despicable that help may be in itself. This resembles an expedient of improbity, because by a politic device it conceals a sinister design. But after reading these extracts no one can be in doubt of the real aim of Bax in relation to religion. But this is not all.

A CYNIC'S SCOFF AT INCONSISTENCY.

This prominent Socialist, who is prepared to use any sort of sectarian helper to accomplish his object, to ally himself with any dissembler who will help to demolish or discredit his own theological system, apparently judges others by his own standard when he says :—"The bourgeois will never place on his moral 'index' any pursuit or course of action which is in any way essential to the system by which he profits. Before the condemns anything as immoral he will take good care that in so doing he is not helping to impede the working of that capitalist system in which he lives and moves and has his being." Then, with self-complacent scorn, he satirises the public opinion of the godly middle class who desire to " abolish public gambling tables, lotteries, and even horse racing," but uphold a commercial system which is largely a method of speculation, and his detestation of capitalism breaks out in a frenzied phrase : " The whole system of capitalism is one great gamble." The fervour of the persons denounced could hardly exceed the intenseness of this amusingly inconsistent intolerance

Then in a satirical outburst of advice to his friends he exhibits his real sentiments in relation to professors of the religion which he despises and whose tenets and habits are so abhorrent to him :—" I say, beware of the bourgeois when with the severe countenance, and mien of righteous indignation, he preaches morality to you ! Follow the advice of Pilate's wife. O socialists, and 'have nothing to do with this just man,' even when he seeks to make for your side since you may be sure there is something in him more than meets the eye or ear." This inconsistency of intolerance is amazing. On one page he permits Socialists to accept the aid of men who "preach morality" on another he says, " have naught to do with such men." Fanaticism of any kind sooner or later involves extreme men in difficulties. The scorn which treats sincere piety and fervent zeal as hypocrisy is a form of fanaticism.

SOCIALISTIC PARTIES AND DIVISIONS.

Mr Bax candidly admits a diversity of sentiments amongst Socialists. This modern movement resembles the early history of that other reformative system which, to him, is so obnoxious. Early Christianity had a variety of parties or sects. In England there are Fabian Socialists, Clarion Socialists, Christian Socialists, Sentimental Socialists, besides the varieties of extremists. Here in Queensland we have mild and fanatical Socialists. All who desire recognition at the head centres of the movement must assent, under rigorous pledge to its fundamental principles and the planks of its platform. As to its basis and formulas it has no moderation, no tolerance.

We have not far to go to find outcasts from its ranks, bearing its stigma, pursued by its malice, carrying the brand of its disavowal, black sheep driven from the fold. Why so driven ? Because then temperate opinions would not harmonise with the stringent evictions of the extremists. The objective was too advanced for them. With the leaders who hold the whip it is imperative. Should that objective be ultimately realised those portions of the earth which share in it will enter on one of the most perilous revolutions ever experienced by the human race. Human ability will be restricted ; genius will be crippled, enterprise will be paralysed ; human action will be organised by a despotic bureaucracy in which the most arrogant, not the most capable men will be predominant ; human interests will be regulated on a monotonous plane of dull and spiritless mediocrity ; incentive to excel will have vanished ; patriotism will be a lost virtue.

That a vast social and industrial revolution is meant is apparent from what Mr. Bax says in closing his chapter on Patriotism :—" If I can only persuade one among you to see how the working classes are being hoodwinked and duped in this country and elsewhere by patriotic cries, and to hasten the day be it ever so little, when the working classes of the civilised world will, with one consent finally abandon the national flags of their masters, and range themselves under the red banner of international Socialism and human brotherhood, I shall not have spoken in vain." This is a revolution of sentiment and relations as well as of condition. Two of the noblest sentiments that can warm the heart and nerve the arm of a true citizen are respect for his Church and loyalty to his country. These sentiments are to be obliterated by Socialism. Religion and patriotism are to be discarded and suppressed.

According to Mr. E. Belfort Bax the flags of renown, of which brave nations are proud, their symbols of heroism and honour, of unity and glory, are to be rent to shreds. Will those dishonoured rags still be symbolic—of the fateful passion which will have torn them to tatters ? Will they be superseded by the blood red and bloody flag of rebellion and revolution, signal and sign of civil commotion, class conflict, clash of social passions, and wreck of individual character and national greatness ? Should such a time of

REBELLION, RIOT, AND REVELRY

ever come, some at least of the "hood-winked and duped" brothers of Socialism will have a good time. How the drinkers will enjoy themselves, and the anarchists revel in frenzied riot ! According to Bax, "purity and prostitution, twin sisters as they are, will assuredly sink locked in a common embrace into the abyss where dead interests, dead controversies, and dead conventions lie eternally at rest." When that funeral has been celebrated, and indolence, drunkenness, and debauchery have satiated their license, will passion subside into charity and riot into peace ? Or, will the day of retribution come, and strong-willed Corsicans arise to execute judgment on leaders who will have scoffed at the laws of God and men, and despised the lessons of history in order to bring their dupes under the Trades Hall reign of "collective will and law" ?

But should this dream of philosophic Socialists be realised in a temporary social truce, will it, with human nature unchanged, secure prolonged immunity from jealousy, rivalry, and envy ? Supposing that white-skinned reformers "progress" into their collective and exclusive Arcadia of tender, sympathetic, and true brotherhood, then will come the time for a "yellow" revenge. Teeming hordes of "uncivilised" and disdained people in the East are awaiting their chance. It is not likely that they will come under the "red banner of international Socialism." Our Australian Socialists can scarcely think of including the native races of Asia and Africa in their "human brotherhood." This phase of brotherly sentiment has not yet developed. Rather, antipathy to them is being cultivated. To be successful, Socialism must be universal, otherwise it is a dangerous delusion.

FAMILY LIFE.

We have seen what one of the living leaders, of Socialism proposes to do with theological creeds, with dogmas of religious faith, with sentiments of loyalty, and with pride of national greatness and glory. He would sweep all these into oblivion ; he would crush them with the heel of "progressive" despotism. These growths of ages, these products of courage, fidelity, and intellect command no respect from him. He exhibits contempt for all who hold to them. There is one more sacred thing which, at present, the European nations revere, and which commands respect also in other parts of the world. This is marriage and family life, including the tender relations of kinship and the warm bonds of blood. What will the great proletarians do with these? At present they are blocking the way. They will find it hard to shift them. For ages men have fought for their wives, their children, their homes. Do these "progressives"' think that the men of the twentieth century will be communistic poltroons where men of former centuries have been heroic husbands and fathers ?'

Let us return once more to Mr. Bax. He is frank enough. Among "ideas and objects which have not as yet won a complete victory even in essentials, which still retain their practical importance are the movement for secular education, for freeing the individual from oppressive laws relating to marriage; for the assertion of sexual freedom before the law and public opinion: for the repeal of other laws wantonly hindering the individual from living his own life; which are based, not on economic of political necessity, but on old conventions that have lost all their meaning, if they ever had any, or on bald moral prepossessions or theological superstitions."

WORN-OUT THEOLOGICAL SUPERSTITIONS.

Whether or not threadbare theological superstitions retain their practical importance, "the movement for secular education" has had fair success in Queensland. It is not very apparent what Bax means by "oppressive laws relating to marriage." Does he desire cheap and easy divorce ? Or, does he crave to cut out of the Decalogue the seventh and the tenth commandments ? The latter seems to be implied by "sexual freedom before the law and public opinion and the repeal of other laws wantonly hindering the individual from living his own life." Are we then to understand that the leading light of modern Socialism desires the abolition of all restrictions on the licentious indulgence of depraved men living their own life. We know too well how in spite of law and public opinion of "moral prepossessions and theological superstitions," self indulgence is claimed by depraved men. Repeal the law, vitiate the public opinion, scout the moral prepossessions, and sweep away the old conventions and theological superstitions, will society be more wholesome?—individual conduct purer and sweeter? —human relations happier ? Not a bit of it. Men and women would lapse into primeval beastliness. Why even barbarian tribes have their moral standards of sexual relations, their recognised codes of marital honour.

For some time past, and always, Bax ruffles into a semi-frantic passion when his mind sheers off into this unsavoury subject. And he does so fairly often. His recent expressions of opinion are reiterations of sentiments cherished by him for some time. He has declared himself in "Outspoken Essays" an antagonist of the life prescribed for men and women in the old Decalogue. He has plainly manifested the elation with which he contemplates "a radical" change in our mode of regarding the sex relations.

CHASTITY TO BE DISCARDED

In the essays referred to, Bax anticipates that when his plan of social renovation has been put in practice "current views on the relations of the sexes will pass away with the conditions which have given rise to them. Monogamy, not enforced but voluntary, will undoubtedly continue as one, perhaps the most usual, among other forms of the sexual relation, but will definitely cease to be considered as having any pre-eminent virtue for all times, and places, and persons over those other forms as at present. The State, the larger political whole, will overshadow and finally kill the autonomy of the kinship group."

It would be easy to quote similar sentiments on this subject from other prominent Socialists. But the subject is not attractive. The marvel is that social reformers should gloat over the prospect of a thorough change in the marital relations and family life of the whole world. Where now, does promiscuity exist ? Even if among, here and there, an uncivilised tribe there may be found a system of tribal sexual communism, is it to such folk we should go for models of conceding "the full claims of the physiological needs of the human being, whether man or woman."

The task of extracting and dealing with these quotations is only undertaken from a sense of duty. A few of our Australian Socialists are as outspoken as Mr. Bax, but one would grieve to think that a majority of them gave assent to such extreme views. Such sentiments are not peaceful but menacing. Their exponents know perfectly that on economic grounds, on the conscious rights of those who use their natural abilities to turn their opportunities, to personal advantage, a great struggle will have to take place in robbing men of those rights. It could not be compensatory; it would be robbery. So long as human nature retains its acquisitive disposition it will stick to what is its own, in spite of the threats and intentions of the red bannered brigade. It may squander it in dissipation ; it will not readily distribute it in charity.

I commend to the earnest consideration of the women of Queensland the deliberate opinions on these vital subjects of Mr. E. Belfort Bax. These women are guardians and conservators of family relationships and home life. Would they like to be abandoned to a drifting life on the ocean of turbulent communism, no husband to love, no child to cherish, no home to adorn and make comfortable ? I warn them against accepting as the final goal of Socialism the partial and temperate objects with which our reformers would lure them into an experiment of the greatest peril. INDIVIDUALIST.

Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), Wednesday 29 January 1908, page 12

THE MORALITY OF ROME.

[FROM ROME IN 1860. BY EDWARD DICEY.]

WE all know the story of " Boccaccio's " Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm ; it is not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed, the only reason for my alluding to it is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most moral and decorous of European cities. In reality, she may he only a whited sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the papacy. Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the Papal city, seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many accounts it is a very curious one. As far as Sabbatharianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy. All shops, except druggists', tobacconists', and places of refreshment are hermetically closed on Sundays. Even the barbers have to close at half-past ten in the morning, under a heavy fine, and during the Sundays in Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut up throughout the afternoon because the waiters are supposed to go to catechism. The English reading-rooms are locked up ; there is no delivery of letters, and no mails go out. A French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the Borghese Gardens are thrown open ; but these, till evening, are the only public amusements. At night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then in Roman Catholic countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted a feast. To make up for this, the theatres are closed every Friday in the year, as they are too throughout Lent and Advent ; and once a week or more there is sure to be a Saint's day as well, on which shops and all are closed, to the great trial of a traveller's patience. All the amusements of the Papal subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals. Private or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is strictly suppressed. There are no public dancing places of any kind, no casinos or cafes chantants.  No public masked balls are allowed, except one or two on the last night of the carnival. The theatres themselves are kept under the most rigid " surveillance." Everything, from the titles of the plays to  the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes clerical inspection. The censorship is as unsparing of double entendres as of political allusions, and " Palais Royal" farces are "Bowdlerised" down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull ; compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the Princess's was a wild and voluptuous orgy. The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted without reference to their political views. The number of wine shops seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. There is another subject, which will suggest itself at once to any one acquainted with the life of towns, but on which it is obviously difficult to enter fully. It is enough to say that what the author of " Friends in Council" styles with more sentiment than truth, " the sin of great cities," does not " apparently" exist in Rome. Not only is public vice kept out of sight, as in some Italian cities, but its private haunts and resorts are absolutely and literally suppressed. In fact, if priest rule were deposed, and our own Sabbatharians and total abstinence men and societies for the suppression of vice reigned in its stead, I doubt if Rome could be made more outwardly decorous than it is at present.
 This then is the fair side of the picture. What is the aspect of the reverse ? In the first place, the system requires for its working an amount of constant clerical interference in all private affairs, which, to say the least, is a great positive evil. Confession is the great weapon by means of which morality is enforced. Servants are instructed to report about their employers, wives about their husbands, children about their parents, and girls about their lovers. Every act of your life is thus known to, and interfered with, by the priests. I might quote a hundred instances of petty interference : let me quote the first few that come to my memory. No bookseller can have a sale of books without submitting each volume to clerical supervision. An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt, because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal offence. Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not to supply meat on fast days, and then told that "whenever on the forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may know they are in the capital of the catholic world."  Forced marriages are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry the accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring. In the provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater lengths. Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once, because such a practice was in "open opposition to the Apostolic laws and institutions." Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote morality in his diocese. In that decree the following articles occur:—" All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage. All persons who have received such presents before the publication of this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three months or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period. Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen days' imprisonment, during which he is to support himself at his own expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be determined on hereafter." I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none more striking than the last. So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its practical result.
 To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here. There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety, to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralised of cities. Each separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep the old Latin rule, " Experto crede." I have talked with many persons, Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have met with, who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country where there is practically neither press nor public courts nor responsible Government, where even no classified census is allowed to be taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained. Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is, after all, the best you can arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that the absence of recognised public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned, the debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole population. More I cannot and need not say.
 With respect to other sins against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober. Rome is certainly not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary. At the street corners you constantly see exhortations against profane swearing, headed "Bestemmiatore orrendo nome," but in spite of this, the amount of blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest provocation, is really appalling. Beggars too are universal. Everybody begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances are that he asks you for a "buono mano." Now, even if you doubt the truth of Sheridan's dictum, that no man could be honest without being rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar. The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one's faith in Roman morality. A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be virtuous or a moral one. The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact. To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants is a strong prima facie ground of suspicion. There is vice on those worn, wretched faces— vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces—vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery. In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind ; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery ; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation, for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will net be surprised if, to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.

Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1861,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60494261

PERVERTS AND PIETY

Finery, Frivolity, and Frailty.

 The " Will of God" and Wilful Women.

The judicial strictures lately passed on the marked increase in the number of sexual offences in this State, aroused but a passing interest in the public mind. The citizen of to-day recognises—consciously or sub-consciously —that sexual depravity is inseparable from the conditions under which modern society exists. It is also beyond dispute that the vast majority of sexual offences remain undiscovered, and that the offenders who are detected—and punished—are invariably the "bottom dogs" of society. Yet statistics compiled in more congested centres than any existing in this State show that while the so-called "liberal professions" furnish 5 per cent. of ordinary criminals, no less than 12 per cent. of those sentenced for child-violation belong to the professional class. Criminals belonging to this section of society possess, as a rule, ample means and have more facilities for concealing their crimes. Even when a case comes to light the social "pull" of the offender, and the soporific influence of wisely-placed cash, prevents his punishment. Within the past decade more than one clergyman in West Australia has been accused of tampering with female children, and although one of the degenerate men of God was "biffed" severely by an infuriated father, the Law, beyond a burlesque inquiry, took no cognisance of the prurient pranks of the pietistic perverts. Moderation is quite as necessary in sexual enjoyment as it is in the gratification of other human requirements. Yet no more intolerant section of society than the clerical exists to-day. The lack of self-control exhibited daily by pulpitpounders—it is only reasonable to suppose—is not confined to their utterances or actions in public. When the Lord leadeth a man beside still waters and maketh him lie down in green pastures, his lines are mostly cast in pleasant places. Few, if any, have so much idle time, or are thrown so much in the

SOCIETY OF FEMALES

as the practitioners of piety. And the parson is always a privileged person. At Sunday schools, church services, bun-banquets, gingerbeer jollifications, and other wowser festivities, he is, to use a colloquialism, "the white-headed boy." Can it be wondered if, surfeited and palled by superfluity, the sexual provocative offered by the charms of mature womanhood should be replaced by a desire for keener stimulation? Leading authorities on the psychology of sex assert that the man who is a universal favorite with women is invariably a sexual pervert. And, apart from the dictum of science, it is asking too much of the credulity of the average man to ask him to believe that spiritual satisfaction is the only solace sought in the circles of wowserdom.
 A more striking proof of the perverted morality of modern Christians is afforded by the universal recognition that the present form of marriage is inadequate. While it is piously proclaimed that "the sacred tie" is divinely ordained, no social stigma is attached to men who seek illegitimate gratification of their sexual impulses. Yet the intuitive reaching out for the fulfilment of her being—if it is sanctified by a marriage ceremony—is regarded as a sign of inborn depravity in a woman. This peculiar delusion that an ecclesiastical anathema tends to subdue the natural instinct known as sexual impulse, is undoubtedly inherited from

THE PRIESTLY BIGOTRY

of the Middle Ages. It is the purpose of sex to propagate the race. The sex-instinct is a law which Nature demands that every individual must fulfil if his development is to be healthy and normal. Modern Christianity, while providing marriage as a means by which the natural desires may find expression, vaguely recognises the shortcomings of "the sacred tie" by tacitly approving of prostitution. It is, the Biblebanging boneheads deprecatingly declare, a necessary evil. Why it is imperative that, in a community that boasts of its Christian principles, its culture, and its civilisation, a woman should be forced to barter the supreme expression of the sacred passion the wowsers never attempt to explain. Possibly they imagine it is the will of God. Yet it is an irrational Deity if, in bygone ages, He willed that woman should be mastered, violated, and beaten into submission by the stronger animal— man. Was it His will that the natural, healthy, sex-nature of woman should become distorted and stunted by starvation until she was forced to offer her body to her master? Of course, should such be the case, the Divine will, naturally enough, was modified considerably by the march of Occidental conceptions of sexual relationship. He let it be known that modern woman was to be coaxed, flattered, and humored, until she consented to become a pleasant plaything. It is a humbling reflection, but nevertheless a bald and brutal truth, that precisely the same feeling animates the Kimberley aboriginal, who stuns his gin with a waddy, as animates the cultured gentleman of modern civilisation, who places his divinity on a pedestal and worships her. In neither case is she regarded as a comrade, a willing lover, or an individual standing on the same footing as man. She is the slave, or the idol, as the case may be, but ever and always the sexual appendage to man.
It is not to be wondered at that women to-day are not as sweet, as generous, or as wholesome as Nature would have had them. Although the welfare of future generations depends on the purity and intelligence of woman, modern conditions have kept her as ignorant of the great social evils which

MENACE THE NATIONAL HEALTH 

as was her mediaeval sister. Her want of training, and the absence of any decent outlet for the tyrannical insistence of the sex instinct, has left her a sentiment-swamped creature whose outlook on existence is circumscribed by the narrow limits of the ring-fetter of a wife. Should the appalling monotony of work and a little sleep, which is the best bargain of ninetenths of married women, deter her from matrimony, she is looked upon as a naturally vicious woman and, denounced by her own sex for drawing worthy and innocent masculinity down into the depths of iniquity. Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan, in her book, "The Truth About Woman," says: "Idleness, frivolity, and the love of finery are the chief causes of a girl's downfall. The last is a far more frequent and stronger factor in determining towards prostitution than actual want, and one moreover, that is very deeply seated in the feminine character. Women must remember that, if they suffer through men's passion, men suffer no less through women's greed. We have got to remember that if many of our fallen sisters have been seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have received their sexual initiation at the hands of our sex. The seduction of young men by women is often the starting point of a young man's association with courtesans. The majority of prostitutes are simply doing for money what they originally did of their own free will for the excitement and the gain of some small personal gift. A chief cause of prostitution, which has not been sufficiently recognised, is sexual frigidity. This is the clearest explanation of the moral insensibility of the prostitute. I am certain that many of the courtesans I have known have never experienced passion. I believe that the traffic of love's supreme rite means less to them than it would do to me to shake hands with a man I disliked."
 Being a woman, Mrs. Gillichan looks upon "the social evil"

FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE

to the mere male. Yet despite the inside knowledge inseparable from her sex, few indeed will believe that a healthy, well-poised girl deliberately chooses a life of shameful barter. Few, very few women reach the brothel in one step, and take that step from choice. Yet although the fair writer will not admit that women instinctively shrink from sex-expression unless it is sanctified by love, she does not hold with any platitudinous piffle about the will of God. In fact, she insists that the ways of wilful woman are the determining factor.

Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 - 1931), Saturday 13 October 1917, page 5

ILLUSTRIOUS LUNATICS.

Mr. J. Corbet, a recognised authority on insanity and kindred questions, contributes to The Arena a most interesting article on "Illustrious Lunatics," from which we quote the following extracts : —

At a moment when the grave sociological problem of the insane engages so much public attention and excites so much anxiety, and scientists and specialists are busy discussing the pros and cons on both sides, it may be interesting to bring to mind a few of the most remarkable personages who were either actually mad or whose mental deformity and moral depravity were such as to qualify them for place amongst the abnormal classes. At any rate, notwithstanding the "divinity" that, it is said, hedges kings, some plain speaking on the subject may have its uses.
 The verity of the aphorism expressed in the line " Great wits are sure to madness near allied," has many striking examples.
 One of the most remarkable instances of illustrious lunacy of a hereditary character in ancient times is that furnished by the family of the Cæsars. It would seem as if the insane taint originated with the great founder of the dynasty, who was afflicted with epilepsy, and, according to some writers, abandoned himself in his younger days to vice and intemperance. The youthful Caesar would have been more than mortal if he did not yield to the temptations by which he was surrounded on every side. He, moreover, when forced to fly from Rome, while yet in his teens, resided for a considerable time at the corrupt Court of Nicomedus, King of Bithynia, where immorality was rampant, and riotous living the rule.
 Cæsar's daughter Julia is said to have been a woman of the worst character. She had a son who was idiotic ; and several others of the immediate descendants and collateral branches of the family were hereditarily infected. It is unnecessary to go much further in this direction to show how moral brain-poisoning brought down the curse of insanity upon the Julian race, and how, even in the case of pagans, the sins of the parents were visited upon the children "to the third and fourth generation" and beyond.
 Alexander of Macedon furnishes another example of how the exercise of absolute power and the unrestrained indulgence of sensuality act upon the brain, destroy the faculty of self-control, harden the human heart, impair the understanding, and finally overthrow the reason. Numerous instances are recorded of Alexander's senseless savagery and bloodthirstiness. History credits him with sighing for more kingdoms to conquer, but his insanity was of the homicidal type, and his longing was not so much for more kingdoms to conquer as for more people to massacre. It is related of him that after the capture of Tyre he caused an immense number of persons, including non-combatants, to be put to death in cold blood. Nearly 20,000 inhabitants of Sangala were butchered by his orders after the city had surrendered, and his barbarities at the taking of Gaza were diabolical.
To come down to our own days, it is notorious that most of the Royal families of the present day have "the mad drop" in them—notably the Russian, German, Austrian, Danish, English, Portuguese, and Bavarian. The conservation and hereditary transmission of the insane taint in all these is assured by frequent consanguineous marriages. In fact, it may be said that all the Royalties of Europe are so married and intermarried amongst each other that there is considerable difficulty about fixing the degrees of relationship between their numerous members. Uncles, aunts, and cousins are jumbled up in a tangle that only the Herald's College could be expected to unravel. Those who are responsible for the making of such matrimonial alliances seem to ignore the fact that consanguineous marriages, especially where mental disturbance has already manifested itself on either side, are not only fraught with danger to posterity, but are certain to produce evil results, psychical or somatical The offspring of such marriages are rarely perfectly sound. If not mentally unbalanced they are not mentally vigorous, or else they are afflicted with physical imperfections, malformation of the limbs, scrofula, defective organs of speech, hearing, and the like.
 The Imperial House of Russia furnishes some examples.
 Ivan, called the Terrible, was nothing less than a violent lunatic. If an ordinary mortal he would undoubtedly have been shut up and ended his days in an asylum for the insane.
 Peter the Great was an epileptic, a drunkard, and a bloodthirsty tyrant. He left a legacy of all his evil qualities to his daughter Elizabeth, who was so dissolute and corrupt that her actions could only be accounted for by mental aberration, of which moral depravity was the outcome. So in the case of Catherine, generally known as the Great, who lead a life so shockingly debased, that, looking back on it from this distance, she also must be regarded as having been morally insane. Her son Paul, who succeeded her, became in the end a violent lunatic, and his subjects, wearied by his acts of cruelly and oppression, put him to death. His son and successor, Alexander, was, towards the end of his life, a victim of melancholia, and died in that state. Nicholas was of such an ungovernable temper that at times his frenzy amounted to temporary insanity. The mind of the late Emperor was supposed to be quite unhinged from fear of the Nihilists, and it is said his death was caused by his fears.
 The terrible tragedies in the Austrian and Bavarian Royal houses are so recent as to be within the memory of all. With regard to Bavaria, what the responsible statesmen could have been thinking about in allowing a madman like Louis II. to squander the substance of his people to the extent of millions upon licentious men and women, and in building palaces and castles in out of the way places, is inconceivable. 
 England also can supply many types and instances not only of hereditary ruthlessness and moral depravity in her sovereigns, but of insanity. The life of Henry VIII. was an uninterrupted career of crime, cruelty, lust, and murder. A gross sensualist and voluptuary ; his conduct towards his many queens, who he did not hesitate to put to death one after another when he grew tired of them, was such as to qualify him, if sane, for the hands of the executioner, and, if not, for a cell in a criminal lunatic asylum. His daughter, Elizabeth, despite her conspicuous abilities as a sovereign, showed clearly the hereditary taint. Her relations with men, and especially with Essex, and his subsequent fate, proved her to be "her father's own daughter," while her savagery in beheading the hapless Mary Queen of Scots, after keeping her in prison for twenty years, can only be attributed to the ruthless and sanguinary disposition inherited from her vicious and depraved parents.
 It is well known the Royal family of England is tainted on both sides. George I. and George II. drank to excess. There can do no doubt what ever their intemperance sowed the seeds which developed into positive insanity in George III.
 The mantle of the man-slayers, to whom reference have been already made, seems to have fallen upon the shoulders of another Eastern potentate, the modern lycanthrope, or wolfman, whose wholesale massacre of his own subjects have excited the horror and indignation of the whole world. It goes without saying that the army or fleet of any one of "the high contracting Powers," as they are pompously called, could stop the Imperial madman's career, and put him into a straight waistcoat at once. The only wonder is why they don't do it. The question may be asked, Is Abdul Hamid mad? Judged by his life, one of sensual excesses, and by his savage treatment of his Christian subjects, he is not only insane, but a criminal lunatic, qualified in every way to rank with the inhuman monsters of antiquity. Taking all these things into account, he may be set down as the most illustrious lunatic that has appeared upon earth from the days of Nero to the present time.

Burrowa News (NSW : 1874 - 1951), Friday 28 July 1899, page 1