RANDOM OPINIONS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 159, 18 April 1949, Page 2

RANDOM OPINIONS

Arab Unity

The Governments of the Arab countries are extremely immature by western standards. Three of the seven members of the Arab League, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and the Yemen continue to exist on a primitive tribal basis and to be governed autocratically through a feudal system. Egypt, Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq have all, in varying degrees, been partly westernised, but their Governments are not subject to informed popular control to anything like the same degree as those Of the western democracies. But despite the appearance of disunity, there are grouilds for believing that the presence of Israel as an established fact will exercise a stronger influence on bringing the Arab States together than did the threat of its establishment. —Michael Hilton, in the “Daily Telegraph,” London)

Reality Since 1 the Berlin airlift began it has cost the lives of 55 Allied airmen. One of those killed in the latest crash was a flight lieutenant from New South Wales—the first Australian victim of a hazardous, round-the-clock operation made necessary by Russia’s relentless blockade of the western sectors of Berlin. The death of this young man on active service in a time of theoretical 'peace must bring home sharply to his fellow-countrymen the evil reality of the struggle which is being waged against the tyranny and ambition of the Kremlin. —“Sydney Morning Herald.”

A Long Way To Nowhere The Viking, Leif Ericson, who landed in America before Columbus and who certainly was ignorant of the shape of the world, probably thought, as many people do to-day, that if you go far enough you must get somewhere. His modern namesake, Leif Hendil, who has flown round the world in seven days, now knows that one of the attractions of a journey round the world is that it is the longest possible way of going nowhere. —“The Times.”