THE WORLD TO-DAY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10163, 18 July 1924, Page 5

THE WORLD TO-DAY.

COMPARED WITH THAT OF PAST. The series of lectures and counterlectures in aid of King Edwards Hospital Fund is now ended say|ll» Times " "Hot Blood or Cold Blood t was the concluding subject. Mr James Agate, on the one hand, contended that throughout© history all great actions, all progress, had been the .result of impulse. Had Caesar hesitated to cross the Rubicon he would have been lost. Having delivered himself briefly to this Agate proceeded to formulate his ideas of the world construction. Mr Philip Guedalla who championed cold blood, retorted that Caesar certainly crossed the Rubicon, but whether it had been good for Rome, was doubtful, while the result was undoubtedly fatal to himself. Then, as Mr Agate had looked

over wide fields of the future, Mr Guedalla took the liberty to turn his eyes on the past and alien aspects of the present. He looked back with wistful regret to the departed coolness and method of the 18th century, when the sentences of prose writers parsed, and poets knew how to construct a line that scanned; and he criticised the false and alcoholic heartiness of certain present writers and the worldiness of the clergy, who, he said, made it ' doubtful whether they were conducting ! a morning service or an evening paper.