From the Cradle to the Grave

Passing through Scandinavia, as he has many times for 40 years. Veteran Foreign Correspondent Negley (The Way of a Transgressor) Farson made his customary mental notes about those happy lands. The landscape: "refreshingly beautiful." The cities: "no slums." Social legislation: "far ahead." Chief characteristic: "about the last place in Europe where sanity still survived." But on one point Farson found himself baffled. "Why," he wrote to Denmark's biggest newspaper. Berlingske Tidende, "in countries noted for their social services and the almost universal kindness of one man to another, in lands where legislation seemed to have abolished most of the misfortunes of life, should Sweden and Denmark have the two highest suicide rates in the world?"*

Though not avid writers of letters-to-the-editor, Danes flooded the paper with replies. Excerpts:

P: "The Danish landscape is fat with a mild, monotonous beauty. The mentality is solid, calm and apparently healthy. But the psychical monotony in a strong mind creates depression. Remember that the inhabitants of these countries in olden days set out on the high seas as rough pirates."

P: "All Danes are looked after and taken care of from the moment they are born. There is nothing more to fight for."

P: "The cause of suicide is too much reason. Animals, as you know, do not commit suicide."

P: "The reason is a lack of God. We need a church which has really got contact with the people."

P: "The welfare state kills the instinct of self-preservation. There's nothing man has to fight for."

P: "We are like spoiled children. When danger and pressure are taken away, neuroses flower, the birthrate declines, and the suicides mount."

Some argued that the Danes simply keep more accurate statistics on suicides. Said Farson: "That plea I won't accept."

*The rates: one in 4,431 people in Denmark; one in 4,460 for Sweden.

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