NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23923, 25 March 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

MEANS AND ENDS There is a divinely appointed order or hierarchy of human activities, writes the Archbishop of York, Dr. Temple, in the Spectator. This does not involve a hierarchical social order in which the people concerned with ''ends" are reckoned as personally superior to those concerned with "means"; that was the perversion characteristic of the feudal period. Hut it does involve some method of securing that the activities concerned with "means'' are pursued with the effect, and as far as possible the motive, of realising the "end. In this sense the whole economic activity of men is concerned with the means to a full human life, whereas religion, art and science are concerned with what arc ingredients in that life itself. So far as economic interest becomes primary the true order is perverted. HITLER'S ADVANTAGE Germany has the great advantage of operating on interior lines. The Prime .Minister s recent statement illustrates very clearly what this advantage means, writes the military correspondent of the Sunday Times. He told us that guns and tanks had to be sent to Kgypt last July and August for the December battle, and bad to get there via the Cape of Good Hope. That is what comes of having to operate on exterior lines. Hitler is in the middle of a circle and can move his troops to almost any point on the circumference quicker than we can move our troops from one point on that circumference to another. This is a very brief geometrical example; on the world's surlaco t ho problem is naturally affected by such considerations as means of transport, geographical features such as mountains, seas, and deserts and climatic conditions. But even so it must bo obvious to anyone without any deep knowledge of geography or strategy that it is quicker lor Hitler to move troops from any part of Germany to any part of Italy and Spain than il is for us to move troops I rout Kngland to Kgvpt by way of the Cape. This makes it necessary for the British War Committee? to think one stop ahead ol Hitler il ii is to get troops and material to the right place and at the right time. It is not therefore a question of taking light decisions on known lads; the \\ ar Committee has to guess better than Hitler has any need to do. This need for better guessing illustrates why if is absolutely essential always to remember that it is no use winning victories in other continents unless we are certain of warding oft deleat at homo. ITALY AND THE BOMBERS In Italy—we are at war with them and it is our business to get them out of the war as soon as we can—there is scarcely a parish which does not contain a priceless part of our Kuropean, Christian and human inheritance. "Do you consider us a museum or a living people?" Signor Mussolini kept on remarking to me ,011 the onlv occasion on which I had a private talk with him, writes Sir John Squire in the Times Literary Supplement. "Both sir," I replied; but he kept 011 returning to the question, the art-gallery-ice-eream-merehant-organ-grinder aspect of Italy having cot on his nerves bo

much that lie could not understand how much wo admired Italy, the eity-and-peasant state, throwing up Verdis, Marconis, D'Annunzios oven in our own impoverished times, a perpetual fountain of ideas, inventions and dreams, far hotter than any mockEmpire or frog-swelliug-itself-iuto-bull without the resources necessary for that cheap ambition. This is not the place for a political argument. We have to win this war against the Germans, and the incidental Italians, and we shall win it. Hut let us have as little to regret as possible after the war. .If —but, happily, the Air Force is manned bv gallant and civilised men —we destroyed St. Mark's at Venice, the Campanile, Giotto's tower in Florence, the roof of the Sistine Chapel, the frescoes at Assisi, we should have prospered no better in this war and we would have stained our record. All of us who think it worth while still lighting for good against evil still dream ot a better Kurope. Jt would not help much if we began to build by knocking away the foundations. Even while the bombs rain upon us we must think about the achievements of all those men in the past who have set their teeth, worked and workshipped, and determined to leave something behind them which would be to the greater glory of God and assist the upward struggle of men in their brief visit to this planet. PURPOSE OF EDUCATION Some people in Britain would define the purpose of education as the production of good citizens; others might prefer to call it the full and harmonious development of the individual. The two purposes are really one and the same, writes Mr. .J. E. Hales in his booklet, "British Education." Much, of course, remains to be done. .It is, for instance, a great gap in our educational system that for the majority of British boys and girls education ends at 1.4. But, when conditions permit, that, active belief in education which exists to-day will doubtless insist that this shall be remedied. But the latent dissatisfaction with traditional forms of education has become constructive, and has given rise to a. wider conception which regards school "subjects" as means rr'ther than as ends, and concerns itself with the environment, habits, skills, interests and attitudes of mind of the pupils.