South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1914-01-08
WE RE ALL BAD LOT
SAYS ENGLISHMAN
Author Finds Reason for Prob
lens of the Day in Mans At
titude to Woman and Her
ACquieSCence.
BY xIxoLA GREELEY sMTH.


We are all a very bad lot. You
are. ] am Everybody is. At least
this is the dreadful opinion which
Harold Begbie. English author. ex-
presses in his new book, The Crisis
in Morals" about TO be published in
the United States.
After putting his ear to the heart
OF the times. feeling its pulse and
taking its temperature, Mr.. Begbie
remarks that modern civilization is
a nightmare.
With our tangoes. our pOmpOms
and our turkey-trots, with our plays
about the social evil and our novels
about unfaithful mates. We are not
even happy in our degradation, he
thinks. Even JOY has acquired the
painful habit of skipping dividends.
Why is il, he asks, that In our
tie surpass the happiness and attain
ment of a thousand years ago?
The author of The Crisis in Nor
ais finds his answer in these words
Of an eastern seer:
Where women are honored the
Divinities are complacent. where they
are despised, it is useless TO pray to
Cod
Woman is the secret Mans atti-
tude TO woman, the decisive fact of
human life.
All the ills of life flow from BIAS
phemy against woman. against the
idea of her essential goodness and
purity.
ITO restore Woman TO her throne,
to crown her afresh with honor and
reverence, is almost 10 bring the
kingdom of heaven TO this troubled
and disOrdered earth" Mr.. Begbie
says.
In order 20 do this he thinks man
must change his attitude of mind to-
wards woman. He must accept the
fact that woman is naturally serious
and good, that II she appears frivol-
GUS light coquettish and artificial.
il is only to conform to mans dis
torted ideal of her
Mr.. Begbie believes that the beset-
ting sin of our age is the material
istic thought TT at "impurity is nat
ural and that purity is unnatural"
Hence has sprung a tolerance for
evil Hence has come the wide
spread opinion that women are thus
and thus anG have been so from an
cient times.
Women are what men force them
to be, they make pretense TO be what
men desire them to be-"
AS overwhelming evidence of this
statement Mr.. Begbie cites Womans
acquiescence in the modern doctrine
OF materialism which he describes as
belief that life is a jig and a
spree"
OF course. this is profoundly true.
If ever the human race attains the
moral level OF what IL thinks Of as
the lower animals the greatest re-
form in the history Of the world will
have taken place. The female OF the
species-eVery species save the hu-
mans naturally profoundly moral.
She lives to care for her offspring.
She is economically independent. She
has no use for the male save as a
father and all the sex crimes OF
civilization are unknown to her.
1t remained for the so-called lord
OF creation" to invent the social
| evil and the moral and physical dis
ease TO which it has given birth.
But while Mr.. Begbie finds gloom
| in the words of the seer I read IN il
/ a message of great hope for the
world and particularly for our own
| country.
For more and more American men
are realizing that If you put WON
/ en- on a pedestal" you merely afford
| her an extra good view OF what is
going on below and that a great
many women in these times insist on
vacating their pedestals to sweep up
around the base. In ten states al
ready the American man. like the
/ gallant gentleman ne is, has handed
/ her the broom. When their back
| ward sisters have all followed the ex-
/ ample OF the suffrage states we will
L. 4 60
/ Crisis in Morals"
| Copyright, 1918, by the Newspaper
| Enterprise Association