NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 194, 30 May 1938, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

WISHES ARE NOT HORSES. Discussing the problem of world order in a recent article, Sir Alfred Zimmerm emphasises the need to stud} 7 the. facts. A policy or an attitude toward a problem, he says, must be based on a comprehensive knowledge of its constituent elements. And that knowledge must be the result of study and observation as close and dispassionate as in the field of natural science. A student of international politics has ao more use for coloured spectacles than a doctor or an engineer or a chemist. Policies or attitudes which mistake do sires for realities, which are the products of what Americans call “wishful thinking”, are no more serviceable in international politics than, in a clinic or a laboratory. JACOB EPSTEIN’S DEGREE. In presenting Mr Jacob Epstein for laureation we honour the foremost of modern sculptors, states the official address of Aberdeen University in conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws on Mr Epstein. The address proceeds:

—The remarkable series of busts, two of which adorn our Aberdeen Art Gallery, in which he has commemorated the features and character of his contemporaries. are in themselves a title to academic recognition. His works of imagination, while they respect and are sustained by tradition, have never allowed the artist’s vision to be subordinated to convention. In their simplicity and sincerity they provide a constant challenge to the simplicity and sincerity of others. The idiom of a great creative artist has to be learned, and as controversies may arise in the learning, the works of Mr Epstein have sometimes evoked a lively criticism which has died away as the critics themselves came to learn or came to be ignored. To-day wo recognise a lifetime of' devotion to the art of sculpture already acknowledged by the great body of artistic opinion.