PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20249, 8 May 1929, Page 11

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

EDUCATION AND LEISURE,

CONFERENCE IN CANADA

NEW ZEALAND'S HERITAGE.

[FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] VANCOUVER. April 17. The National Council of Education, holding its triennial meeting here for "the past ten days, has been attended by delegates from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Franco, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia and Japan. The main theme of the discussions has been "Education and Leisure."

"Time is money," the oft-quoted excuse of the busy modern man, was taken by the Indian poet and philosopher Sir Rabindranath Tagore for a text in a striking address which opened the proceedings. "When a man says 'Time is money,' lie forgets that leisure is wealth." he said, the wealth that is a creation of human spirit, whose material may be money. This age is riding on a tornado of rapidity. We cannot stop its course, and should not, even if we could. Our only regret is that we may forget that slow and mature productions of leisure are of immense yalue to man, for these only can give balance. Creative Ideals Neglected.

"The spirit of progress occupies a great deal more of ou:? mind to-day than the deeper life process; of our being, which requires depth of leisure for its sus-

tenance. We do not allow ourselves timo to evolve religion, to reconcile the conflicting elements of society. Creative ideals suffer. We are spiritually slovenly. The cramped time produces deformity and degeneracy; frenzied haste develops chronic dyspepsia. Man is growing old in spirit; sharp shocks of quick time bring on him the weariness of decrepitude."-

The" Pacific, in its relations to the future, necessarily was a topic of discussion. From all the speakers generally carne the prediction that the Pacific is entering the new theatre of world affairs. The subject was mainly discussed by representatives of the three Dominions whose lands are lapped by the waters of

the Pacific. Each saw in it the natural means to cement still further the tie that binds them to the Motherland.

Mr. Laurence Push brook-Williams, Foreign Secretary of the State of Patiala, said the Indian Princes asked him to attend the conference, and to bring them back word that it was one more link in the fundamental unity of the Empire. Speaker lrom New Zealand.

Mr. Frank Milner, of New Zealand, gave an address which made a profound impression on the conference. He crossed the Pacific, he said, believing .the conference would merely be bent on intensifying the consciousness of corporate Canadian lifer. Instead, he found an international gathering seeking eclectic humanism. - For the Dominions of the Southern Seas, Canada—their halting place between the Pacific and Atlantic, which divided them from the Motherland

—had a peculiar interest-, especially in the duty it had assumed of interpreting the United States to the British Empire. In New Zealand wo do not quibble ■about our status in the Empire," Mr. Milner said. "We prize our heritagc> which is 99.5 per cent. British in stock, and are content to broadcast the ideals of our Motherland among our people. It' is an article of faith with us that the British Empire is the stabilising influence in world politics."