NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 274, 1 September 1939, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

NO LONGER A C 3 NATION. As regards tho Militiamen called up under the now Military Training Act, a day spent as Interviewing Officer attached to a medical board in a West London suburb enables one to form an idea, writes Major B. T. Reynolds in the “Spectator.” I saw some 50 men varying from public school boys through various grades of skilled worker to milk roundsmen, window cleaners and the lilco—a fair sample of those who will be coining up for training next month. The board graded them 1., 11., HI. and IV. in order of fitness. The medical examination appeared to be very thorough and the doctors were delighted with the results. The men I saw struck me as a very good lot physically. The figures for the first 17,865 Militiamen examined throughout Britain have been published by the Ministry of Labour. As many as 84.5 per cent were Grade 1., 8.8 per cent Grade 11., 4.4 per cent Grade 111., and 2.3 per cent Grade IV. These figures can be compared with the report of the war-time Ministry of National Service, working to the same medical standards in 1917-1918 —36 per cent Grade 1., 23 per cent Grade 11., 31 per cent Grade 111., and 10 per cent Grade IV. There is cause for legitimate satisfaction here. GANDHI AND HITLER. Writing in the “New York Times,” Mr Henry Lyndhurst draws a contrast' between Lord Halifax’s meetings with Gandhi when he was Viceroy of India, and his interview with Hitler ip 1937. With the scrawny, dark-skinned Asiatic, Halifax could reason and discuss calmly; with the fiery European he had difficulty in achieving any mental contact at all. Gandhi quietly exchanged ideas with him; Hitler treated him as if he were a massed audience in the Sportspalast and made loud speeches to him which lie could not understand until an interpreter repeated them. Between these two meetings there was an amazing and significant contrast. One might have imagined that when a Yorkshire squire fared an Oriental mystic differences of background and mental habits would interpose insuperable barriers; but that the same squire, encountering another European —who normally would lie much closer to him in race and culture —would at least be able to converse to some purpose. Yet precisely the opposite proved true. Gandhi, for all his zealotry, was a civilised man who preferred reason to violence; and in this sense it is literally true that Gandhi proved a better European than Hitler —a fact which speaks volumes for the state to which Europe has fallen.