Society in West

By L. V. B. CHOWDARY B.A. (OXON); BAR-AT-LAW

FESTIVALS

The English Home is at its best during Christmas and Easter. Christmas is the most important festival in most of the Christian countries. In England, it is an occasion for family gathering and much merry-making. Christmas is considered to be primarily a family festival; hence, wherever they may have been, sons and daughters and other members of the family reach the old homestead for Christmas merry-making. The day on which Christ was born is famous for its presents and greeting cards. Christmas presents are not only given to and received from friends and relatives, but they are also exchanged by the family members among themselves. Parents give them to children and children to parents, and children to each other among themselves. Husband and wife give and receive them and lovers make a great time of it. Great care is taken in choosing a present for Christmas. That which is most needed or not possessed by the recipient is sought to be given. It is a pleasure to give as well as to receive a Christmas present. Christmas is said to be also a children's festival. It is true that children seem to get the best out of it. They are in pleasant terror and joyful expectation of Father Christmas who comes down by the chimney in the middle of night and is so well-known by his long white beard and whiskers and longer flowing red robes. They expectantly wait for his arrival with the sack of presents on his , from out of which he takes beautiful little toys and delicious sweets which he puts in the old stockings that they have hung by the door of their bed- room. Christmas really begins with the Christmas eve. By the eve everyone will have arrived and the Christmas tree is set up in the drawing-room, all alight with candles and heavily burdened with various presents. The members, relatives and friends gather round the Christmas tree, when prayers are offered. The presents are distributed either after dinner or just before it. After dinner there is music and singing and probably dancing too. A white Christmas, that is, when snow has fallen, is very much liked in England. Christmas indeed, looks very pretty with a white saree covering the whole body, and drawn tightly over the head. And one would not get the real Christmas feeling until it snows overnight and the air is sharp and crisp in the morning. On the day of Christmas, greetings of ‘Merry Christmas to you’ are heard everywhere and most people go to Church for the morning service. At mid-day there is the Christmas dinner and it is usually a sumptuous affair. There is plenty of turkey, plum-pudding and minced pie, and many kinds of wines and liquors are served. You cannot think of Christmas without turkey, plum-pudding and drinks. Nor can you think of it without holly and mistletoe. You find them everywhere in the house. You have your Christmas tree in the Drawing Room, your turkey and plump-pudding in the Dining Room, your lacquers and cocktails in the sitting room, but you have your holly and mistletoe at every entrance, in every room and above every lounge. They are the symbols of Christmas-tide and are like our saffron and festoons. They make a very interesting combination and a very pleasant decoration. The holly with its flaming scarlet berries signifies audacity and daring, and the mistletoe with its soft pearl-like berries implies coyness and invitation. And the mistletoe is the joy of young men and women. Christmas, I believe, is very dear to lovers for what the mistletoe means and gives to them. If a woman sits or stands below the mistletoe, a man may kiss her with impunity. And young women do not now-a-days hesitate to exercise equal rights with young men in this matter. As if to provide opportunities and excuses for the timid and the prudish, the mistletoe is hung at the entrances, above the seats and in various other convenient places. So a wary young woman or man looks up to see whether there is mistletoe hanging above her or him and whether an eager friend or lover is lurking near by to rush at and snatch a kiss from her or him. The significance of the mistletoe can, to some extent, be understood by the words of a practical young lady who said to her timid young friend, "Harry, come and sit by me. If you are a stickler for formalities, bring the mistletoe with you".

The merry-making goes on for the whole day. But the day is considered more religious than social and it is expected that people should spend it in quiet and homely chat, or better still, in prayers and meditations. But the day next after Christmas is Boxing-Day, and it is so called, because Christmas boxes are given on that day. It is the day for the greatest merry-making. There are concerts, cinemas and theatres all over the country and a good many dances and balls are given. The important theatres and restaurants provide facilities for dances and dinners on that day and the New Year's Day, and they take the utmost trouble to give a good time to their customers. The family or some of its members may go to town, if they are living in the country, for enjoying themselves. Christmas is very pretty in the country with its magnificent meadows and majestic woods which, when covered with snow, look like the land of Kailasa and the peaks of the Himalaya. The Yule logs are a feature of Christmas in the country and when set alight in the open in celebration of the Yule tide, they blazen the surroundings as the sun blazens the thick white clouds. Logs of wood are used for fires in the Drawing and Dining Rooms and they make a very cheerful and glorious fire. People who live in towns but have country mansions go into the country, and they may have a party of friends and relatives down with them. If they have a party, they will have concerts and dances and will have a jolly good time on the whole.

New Year comes soon after Christmas, which falls on the 25th December in every year. It is not so Important for the English and the Germans as Christmas, but in Scotland it is the primary religious festival. There, it is celebrated in high spirits and with great rejoicings, and friends visit each other just on the stroke of 12 in the night, with bottles of whisky and loaves of bread. The favourite song of the Scots when they usher in the New Year is "Auld lang syne" which is sung with great feeling by men and women together in a circle. The New Year is celebrated with pomp and luxury and the dances, masks and balls on the New Year's eve are its chief features. Great festivities prevail and much merry-making goes on, on the eve of the 31st December. When the clock strikes 12, the New Year is ushered in with song, dance and wine. ‘Ring in the new, ring out the old’ is the climax and the finale to the evening rejoicings and everybody wishes everybody else ‘A happy and prosperous New Year to you.’

Next in importance after Christmas and New Year comes the Easter. It begins with Good Friday. Good Friday is mostly spent in Church-going and Bible-reading. The chief feature of Easter is the Easter eggs. Presents of eggs made of chocolate or sugar are given with little artificial chickens. Peasants and farmers often give presents of real and live eggs and chickens. Other kinds of presents also are quite usual and popular. If the weather is merciful, Easter is really an enjoyable time, for it comes in April which is spring-time in Europe and is generally warm and pleasant. At Easter the woods are green, the lawn is thick and trimmed, and flowers begin to blossom. The family can gather on the lawn or in the shade of a tree and have a gay and happy time.

There are other religious occasions also, such as Lent and Whitsuntide, but they are not of sufficient importance for us to take notice of them here.

RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL EVENTS

Apart from the festivals mentioned above, there are some events that occur in the home which make home-life a very pleasant one. They are Christening, Birthdays, Coming of Age, and Marriage. Christening in the West is as great an event as it used to be in the Aryan household and as it, even today, is among the orthodox Brahmins. But there is this difference. We do not have god-parents like the Westerners. They have one or two god-parents for their children, and the god-parents are close friends or relatives of the parents and they are willing to take interest in the welfare and future of the child. They take the place of parents, though not legally, in the absence of the latter and they may be called secondary fathers or mothers. The christening of the child is done in the Church, whereas our Namakaranam is performed in our own homes.

The Westerners keep their birthdays, that is, they celebrate the days on which they were born. We do not keep them so regularly. But, I am told that in the South, they offer prayers in the temple on the birthday in the name of Janma Nakshatra i.e., birth-star. A birthday is really a delightful affair. Friends and relatives are invited and birthday presents are showered on the lucky one and even the tiniest may offer his or her little present. Birthdays have no age and, if it is his turn, the most august-looking parent may not despise the mite of a helpless looking child. The person whose birthday it is that is being celebrated, has the final say in the arrangement of festivities and everything is done to please him.

Coming of age is an important event in the home-life of the West. It is celebrated for both boys and girls when they attain the age of 21 years. In aristocratic or well-to-do families, it is celebrated on a grand scale and at great expense. The boy or girl has reached manhood or womanhood and has thereby acquired a certain status in society and in the eye of law. He is then in a fit position to embark upon his own life. The coming of age of the eldest son and heir of a noble Lord is of special importance, because he may then affect the status quo of the family estate. Moreover, the attainment of majority is an occasion for the young persons to make new friendships and renew and strengthen the old ones. There will be an inevitable ball or dinner and dance to celebrate the occasion. Both parents evince great interest in the coming of age celebrations of their children, but the mother is particularly anxious that the celebration or the coming of age of her daughter should be a success, because it may lead to a happy match for the latter.

ECONOMIC RELATIONS

Now we shall turn to the economic relations of the various members of a Western family. The father is of course the source of all money in the family and the household expenses are found by him. The mother is in the possession of the family exchequer and whatever is spent for the household necessaries is spent by and through her. The father usually gives the mother so much money per week, month or quarter, for expenses and she has to manage the house with that money. As a matter of fact, she always saves something out of the money given to her and that goes into her own pocket. She may not have money of her own and it does not look nice to be asking her husband for little expenses. A loving husband may remember that his wife requires pocket money, but unfortunately not all loving husbands are thoughtful and remembering. So, the little money that is saved up by careful management of the household will come in very handy for the housewife. Even children have their pocket money. It is given them in many ways and on various occasions, but the chief source is festival and birthday presents. And parents give occasional shillings for being good or clever, and friends or relatives of their parents present them with small sums of money. So in one way or other, both boys and girls have money of their own which they can on the whole spend as they please, provided they do not spend it in bad ways. They may, for instance, buy presents for each other or their parents or they may buy sweets, toys or books for themselves. They have in many cases also separate accounts in some Bank or Society which are month by month, year by year, added to by their parents, etc. That money is allowed to accumulate with interest until the day when the child has grown up and desires to draw it out for some use in life. It will, for example, come in very handy to enter into some profession or to start a small business. By this practice, people in the West are taught from their childhood to have and keep something as their own and to look after their economic interests generally. There is in their hands something which they can call their very own and which cannot be taken away from them, and they can use it just as they please. A boy or a girl

is made to feel by this practice that his or her economic interests are not quite the same as those of his or her brother or sister and that he or she must, therefore, look after himself or herself. So every child, every person in the family, has a separate economic life within the limits of the family. This may be one of the reasons why our people call the Westerners materialistic but I must confess, I think, that it is a very sensible way of fostering in the child a sense of the responsibility and the seriousness of life.

The system of inheritance in the West is rightly open to criticism and condemnation. It is no doubt inequitable but it is not without its merits. We need not discuss the merits or draws of it here. The general inheritance is by primogeniture, that is, if a man dies without leaving his property by will, it will go to the eldest son. Of course he can execute a will and distribute the property to whomsoever he pleases, unless the property happens to be an entailed estate. There is no co-parcenery system in the West, so, a son does not become legally entitled to a share of the parental property on his birth. Nor can he enforce a partition against his father, because the property that the father inherits from his father is not ancestral in the hands of the father. On a man dying intestate, the whole of the real property goes to the eldest son and the personalty is shared by the widow, younger sons and daughters with the eldest son. But, the father provides for his younger sons and also daughters. He educates the younger sons, gives them proper training and starts them in life in some vocation or other. He looks after them and helps them until they are firm on their legs. He may also bequeath to them money and land by his will. The girls are also taken care of. They are well provided with settlements, etc., and are happily married off. The widow is not neglected either. She gets a share in the personal property of the deceased and in these days of wills, she is not forgotten unless she is cut off with the proverbial shilling by an unkind husband. There were changes recently in the system of inheritance in England and a definite sum of money is set aside now for her benefit, which sum is made the first charge on the net estate of her late husband. The Westerners are more kind to the helpless widows than we are. We give our woman all the toil of the household work, and when we die, we leave them helpless and penniless. It is not very often that sons cherish or look after their mothers. The widow's lot in India is most heartrending.

WORK AND EDUCATION

When the husband goes to work after breakfast, the wife helps him with his coat and hat, if there is no servant, and gives him a hug and a kiss and sees him off at the door. The kissing and seeing the man off are usually done, though they may often degenerate into a mere formality. A lucky man starts on his day's work with the warmth of the kiss on his lips and the radiant smile of his beloved in his heart. We, in India, are above all these ‘frivolities’. We are too ‘spiritual’ and austere to descend to human weaknesses. When he returns from work in the evening, there is an eager wife waiting for him, ready to make him cheerful with a smile and happy with an embrace. Immediately he arrives, he is provided with a jug of hot water and towel and he changes into a more comfortable dress and perhaps into slippers. There is a cup of steaming tea waiting for him, if he is not in the habit of taking high tea. Now-a-days women are going out to work and if the woman is a married one, I am afraid she does not get half the consideration she gives him at the hands of her husband, even though the latter is unemployed and is not earning anything at all. We may probably have to wait until the respective positions of men and women are reversed, for the women to be petted off to work and welcomed home with delight.

I have already said that in the matter of their children's education, both father and mother are now-a-days taking equal interest and have equal voice. Husband and wife discuss to which School, College or University their sons or daughters should go and to what vocation in life they should trained. When the place of education and the walk of life is settled in consultation with the young person concerned, he or she goes to study. In the case of children they are sometimes sent to Boarding Schools where they remain for four or five years. If the parents are rich and can afford the expense, they may send their girls and boys to the Public High Schools such as Eton and Harrow and to Universities like Oxford and Cambridge. When they send their children to a Boarding School, they visit the school beforehand and decide for themselves whether it is good enough for their children. If the boys are going to a Public High School or a residential University like Oxford, parents pay a visit to the place and to the Head of the High School or the College chosen in the University, and inspect the rooms which their son or daughter is going to occupy during his or her residence. They make suitable purchases for furnishing the rooms and fixing up the young man when he goes into residence for the first time. During such ‘varsity’ or college events as the Eight weeks at Oxford, the May week at Cambridge or Eton's Day, sons and daughters invite their parents to their school or college and the parents enjoy the fun of the occasion immensely. The parents' delight is great indeed, if the son or daughter takes a prominent part in the sports or games of the school or college. When the term is over and the school or college is closed for the vacation, the boy or the girl comes to spend the holidays at home. The day of arrival is a festive time in the house. The young man or woman has had new experiences and has learnt lots of new things which he or she is eager to impart or narrate to the parents. Everybody in the home is quite happy and for a time the parents take delight in introducing with natural pride their boy or girl to their relatives and friends.

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

In social matters, the mother has a better voice and social success is chiefly due to her, It is she who makes or mars a social function. The husband had, at one time, to do all the inviting, but now-a-days, he has practically become a number in this respect. It is the woman who gets up all socials and parties and who extends her invitation to high and low. It is impossible that a social function should become a success if the wife does not like or sulks about it. But the function may go on as merrily as ever if the unchivalrous husband finds no time or has no patience with his wife's frivolities or whims and fancies. A clever and pretty woman is a great asset to her husband in his social or material advancement. She can get people in high places to her parties and when she goes to other people's parties, she can make friends with people of wealth and power, who may be of some use to her husband. Apart from material gain, a wife who is admired by the high and mighty is a very desirable person and is a pleasure in herself.

Among the social events, presentation at Court for a woman and attendance at the King's Levee for a man are the grandest and most satisfying to the social vanity. A woman would give a lot to be presented to their Majesties at the Court held by them, and a man would go a good deal out of his way to be one of the elect who are commanded by His Majesty to attend his Levee. There are special dresses for both Court and Levee and they are not very comfortable to wear. But the woman fondly imagines that she will be very pretty in the Court dress, so she takes the greatest trouble to make it as beautiful and costly as possible. The man has, however, no pleasant illusions about his Levee dress, but he ingeniously satisfies himself that he is wearing the dress of a noble follower of William the Conqueror.

Next to these Court functions, come the balls that are given for the benefit of a daughter. These balls are an introduction of the daughter to society and eligible young men, and are an avenue for her marriage. So the mother is frightfully anxious that her daughter should look her best and the ball be a success. The coming of age of a son or daughter and particularly of the eldest son of an aristocratic family is, as has already been mentioned, an occasion for friends and relatives to meet and it is celebrated by dinner and dance. Birthday parties provide opportunities for free social amenities. There are hunt balls which are a great feature of the English country-life and they are quite important social events. Many leading members of society and even Royalty give and attend them and one may find oneself at such balls sitting next to a man or woman of high social status and of great wealth.

Apart from functions, parents or children may get up lunches, teas or dinners to entertain friends or celebrities or to help a deserving cause. Children's parties are generally their birthday parties but the husband and wife may entertain a savant, a scientist or an artist, and one or the other may organise a charity benefit or performance. Picnics and excursions are quite popular in Europe and their popularity is steadily increasing. Picnic parties are a thorough entertainment and it is a great joy to take part in them in summer in the woods or on the lakes or hills. Many romances are woven, many affections are contracted and many loves are made under the green foliage, on the cool water, or by the enchanting hill-side. Excursions are rather tiring but they will bring kindred spirits together and create mutual sympathies. At the head of these parties stands the political dinner. It may not be very interesting to have to listen to the drab talk of politicians, but fortunately for the host and hostess and the diners, politicians of to-day talk anything but politics at a political dinner.

Now-a-days political dinners give more lime-light and social status than any other social function, so people with money or connections are turning more and more to them. These dinners have become a fashion and a woman must of course be in the fashion. Boys and girls occasionally invite, with their parents' permission, their friends for a meal, or for a stay of a week or two. Unless the friend is known to the family, the son or daughter cannot invite to the home a person of the opposite sex.

Calling on friends and relatives and returning their visits are necessary adjuncts of modern social life. If a stranger goes to a place to live there, it is customary for the people of the neighbourhood to call on him and welcome him into their midst. He has a general assurance of help and assistance by his new neighbours. But if the new comer has nothing about him to attract the attention of his new neighbours, he himself calls first on the Vicar, the Doctor and the Squire. As a rule, the clergyman is not a stiff-necked man and will look up the new lamb that has strayed into his fold. There are, however, no hard and fast rules about making calls. Practice in this matter largely depends upon the individuals and their mutual relations.

There is another phase of Western social life which is very important and very interesting. It is the participation in sports and games by both men and women. In England hunting is a very great favourite with the aristocratic and landed gentry and the hunting season witnesses many young men and women donning hunting dress and riding to the hounds. There is an occasional fall and a broken neck, and the youth who has had the good fortune of having gracefully broken his neck will not go down in social estimation. Hunting, however, is not a favourite sport in many of the Western countries. Polo is a thundering good game, but it is so expensive that an average man cannot afford to play it. Cricket is a typical English game and it is played universally throughout England. Boys learn it since when they are tiny. You cannot find a boy in England without a cricket bat of some sort in his games armoury. Even the girls are taking to it now-a-days, but it is doubted whether it would become popular among them. Cricket has now become a world game which the Australians are playing with great skill. We have ourselves very fine cricketers in India. Football and especially Rugby football, called ‘Rugger’ for short, is a great favourite with the English people. ‘Rugger’ has become a national institution in England just like horse-racing. Tottenham and the Derby have become equally important in the lives of the sports and games loving English people. The New Zealanders seem to do well in Rugger, but in the continental countries it has not made any great progress. Tennis has, of course, become the most universal game. It can be played in any country and by anybody. The French, both men and women, have excelled in the game. Golf has also become popular, but it is an expensive game and is played only by a few. The United States has specialised it. Hockey has recently been taken up with enthusiasm in the West, but it is played best in Northern India. Horseracing is probably the most popular institution in England, and all Western countries have had it for a considerably long time. Fortunately or unfortunately, it has also spread to Eastern countries like India. Boxing is now challenging the supremacy of horseracing in some of the Western countries. The United States of America is the Mecca of boxers and their promoters. There are games and pastimes for old people also and bowls and quoits are great favourites with them. They while away in the warm evenings the few years that yet remain to them on the beautiful lawns of a country side. In the Western countries, men and women have realised the beauty of form and colour and they are using every opportunity to cultivate the symmetry of figure and glowing with health and colour. They found out long time ago that time is money, but they are now rediscovering that health and beauty are the enjoyment of that money. So new games, sports and pastimes are springing up among them. The latest game that has come into vogue is what is called ‘padder tennis’ which is played in the usual way on courts with only half measurements, with wooden bats and not netted racquets.

RELIGION

We in India have an idea that we only are religious and spiritual and that the West is materialistic and ungodly. If we take the trouble to read their history, we will find that there were great religious and spiritual waves in Western countries and they at one time abounded in martyrs and ascetics. The religious wars of Western Europe, the persecution and the inquisition in South and South-Eastern Europe, and the Crusades into Asia Minor, prove abundantly my contention that in matters of religious fervour and of sufferings and sacrifices to the cause of religion, the West did one better than India, for example. The West, it is true, has not developed a metaphysical philosophy as profound as ours, but it has developed a philosophy which is as good, moral and great as our Vedanta philosophy. As for those who abandoned the pleasures of this world and lived only for the next world, we cannot find a better example than that of the Lord Jesus Christ who was the founder of their religion. There were many ascetics who lived as simple, pure and desireless lives as even our great Rishis and Sanyasis. There were monasteries as good as, if not better than, our Mattams. They had even Sanyasi Ashrams for women called convents and nunneries which we did not have, at least on such large scale. The Mattams we had were really of Buddhistic origin. It is claimed that in Hindu society, religion is interwoven into family and social life, and that it is a matter of daily experience to the members of a Hindu home. I grant the contention was true in the olden days, but I fear it no longer holds good at the present day. But I claim that religious living in family life, religious experience in daily work, and religious principles in the bases of society, were not and are not the exclusive privileges of the Hindus. The Christian people of the West lived, especially in the early days of Christianity, a life so full of religious piety and charity that it would grace the home-life of Vasishtas and Gautamas. They have no family gods or the tiny niches for the comfortable resting of the gods, and they do not clean the little idols with ashes and tamarind so as to make them shine like new copper coins and clothe them with pieces of fine silk or cotton, nor do they break coconuts to appease the anger of the gods. But they are as devotional as any orthodox Hindu to their Cross and what it signifies to them. Their counting of the rosary is as good as that of our Japamala. They offer prayers to God when they retire to bed and rise in the morning, and they have graces at the beginning and the end of every meal. The Church-going in the West is much frequenter than our temple-going. Some people go daily and many go at least once a week. It is true the number of the people going to Church has steadily fallen in recent years, but can we show half-a-dozen people in a village of a thousand souls who go to their temple even once a month? It may be said that we Hindus need not go to the temple because our home itself is the temple. There are people who say that, according to our Sastras, God is in us and that there is no difference between. Paramathma and Jeevathma, and that therefore we need not go to any temple at all. My reply to them is: why have you built, then, your temples and set up idols in them at great expense and trouble? If the temples are intended for the ignorant, and the ignorant do not know the benefits of temple-worship, it is up to our Acharyas and advocates of Sanatana Dharma to go about and instruct the ignorant masses in the matter. If the external worship is of any religious or spiritual good, the Westerners do not lag behind us in that matter. They not only go to Church oftener but they also take part in the church decoration and music and lesson-reading. The daughters and mothers help in decorating the church with flowers and corn stalks and in playing the organ or some other music. The sons sing in choirs and the father reads the lesson of the day.

Religion is the basis of all civilised communities. So in every community and in every family, the priest plays an important part. The part played in the West by the clergyman is as great as that played by our purohit in family life. There is a saying amongst us, repeated half Jokingly and half sarcastically, that the purohit enters into your life even before you are born, and does not leave you even when you are dead. I think the saying applies to a large extent even in the West. The clergyman is needed for christening, wedding and burial, and the festivals of religious significance like Christmas, Easter, Lent and Whitsuntide and auspicious days like ‘Good Friday’ do not miss his presence. His visits to your house are as frequent and obnoxious as those of our purohits. But one thing may be said in favour of the priest in the West. He does not trouble your departed soul with his Shraddhas and Thathinams and he does not fleece the living in the name of the dead. On the other hand, he does a certain amount of beneficial social service to the poor and the needy. He is generally looked up to for advice and help by the weak and the helpless of his parish and he often gives both unhesitatingly and generously. He will organise socials, relief works, and charity benefits to help their cause. You will find the clergyman as the chief mover or as one of the leading spirits in any work, organisation or party, which is got up to give a helping hand to those who need it. He visits the poor and the working classes in their small huts and narrow tenements and advices them to be clean and tidy, and gives them hope by his kind and sincere words. We know that nothing of the sort is done by our twice-born purohits.

HOSPITALITY, CHARITY

AND SOCIAL SERVICE

The Hindus are rightly proud of their hospitality. The guest-worship is still existent in the Hindu home though it is not anything like in the days gone by. But it is a mistake to imagine that in no other community in the world there is hospitality. It is a worse mistake to think that in the West hospitality and charity were unknown. Western home did know of them and of their true nature and did its best to practice them. It is true that Western people did not, even in the old days, make hospitality a fetish and a regular item in the daily routine and that they did not go to the extent of seeking out guests and bringing them home to feed and fuss over. But they understood the true spirit of hospitality. A stranger, a hungry tramp and the man who had lost his way were welcomed, fed and sheltered even at dead of night. When the day was stormy or snowy and the night cold or foggy, an unfortunate man or woman was specially welcome to the warmth of the hearth and a cup of hot broth, if nothing else was in the house. Even the innkeepers may put up a man and give him something to eat and drink when he is driven there by hunger and inclement weather. Piety and natural kindness were the motive power for their hospitality. Considerations of pleasing the Gods or hopes of happiness in the next world did not weigh with them. Now unfortunately the days of hospitality are changed in the West. They have changed with the change in the economic life of the community. Most of the Western countries have become industrialised and the agricultural countryside with its peasant and farmer population has lost its former prosperity. Most of the people are now living in big cities and the struggle for existence has become very keen. These changes have affected the outlook of the people and have unhappily blunted their hospitable instincts. Besides, laws are passed prohibiting requests for food and alms; yet, even now, you will find a housewife giving food and even clothes and old shoes to the needy who go to her on the pretext of selling something or other. Charity in the form of alms is not unknown but I believe it was not so extensively practiced as in the East. But communal or social charity is far greater in the West than the East can ever boast of. There are many different philanthropic organisations and charity societies which help to alleviate the hardships of life. Charity is not confined to the poor and the helpless in the West. There are scholarships and endowments which help the rising generation. There are societies which extend an encouraging hand to the poor young artists, etc. Social service is largely the special product of the Western countries and their civilization. In most countries the Government itself has organised and built up an excellent social service. For example, in England they have Health Insurance, Old Age Pensions and Unemployment Benefit. The ‘poor law houses’, the homes for foundlings, the ex-soldier homes and the sailors’ homes and Dr. Bernardoes’ homes etc., are some of the features of the social service in England. There are also Social Service leagues which organise service and there are institutions like the Toynbee Hall and the Oxford and Cambridge houses, where young men are trained to social work and are sent out among the masses. Bazaars, theatricals and concerts are organised to help some charity or other.

Not only men but animals also receive protection and care. There are organisations for the prevention of cruelty to animals and for the protection and care of stray cats, etc., Individuals also take on some social work such as teaching at night schools and instructing in knitting and basket making.

PUBLIC AND POLITICAL WORK

There now remains only the consideration of the relation of public and political work to home-life in the West. Father and mother or the grown-up sons and daughters may take up public work and serve on local bodies such as parish, district and county councils or as ‘poor law guardians’ and municipal councilors and on various committees. They will, by so doing, do a good bit of useful service. The home is directly interested in the political issues that are agitating the country and are exercising men's minds and it has its favourite party which it would like to see in power. So its members may and sometimes do take part in the political life of the country. Since the vote was given to them in 1918, women have been taking an active part in political discussions and deliberations and are themselves contesting seats in the House of Representatives. Now in England women have an equal franchise with men and consequently the political atmosphere is more electrified than ever. If the late war has engineered or increased a woman's self-realisation, the vote has made her assertive and independent. We shall have to wait and see what kind of results will follow the granting of equal franchise to them in England. The domestic woman has changed into a political woman and if the change is not accompanied by a realisation of her true nature and mission in life, the home may go, in vulgar parlance, ‘to dogs’. I do not advocate ‘to the kitchen’ policy for women which is really hideous and quite out of date, but I plead for the cause of Home in the interests of married happiness and healthy communal growth.