Mr Pascall's Visit.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20542, 10 May 1932, Page 8

Mr Pascall's Visit.

Mr Sydney Pascall, the president of Rotary International, will not feel that the value of his welcome to Christ«hurcH is in any way diminished by what partly explains its warmth: the fact that Rotary here has tested itself and advanced beyond the stage of experimental enthusiasm to that of earnest conviction and hard work. The public has seen something of what it can do, in the Annual street collection fdf the relief of distressed families* but only something; and although Rotary has earned a wide public respect by this admirable effort, it would not ask to be judged, and it would hot be sufficient to judge it, by that. If Rotary lives by the self-respect of its members, it is because they know that it is not once a year and conspicuously at work but perpetually, and often silently and invisibly; and that its principles are not valid here and there and now and then, but always and everywhere; This is the meaning of Rotary as an international organisatiom and the source of its strength and the reason why Mr Pascall, as its. international head, can speak as he does about its real contribution to the repair of a "mad world;" Too many people slip into an attitude of helpless expectation. Whatever is tb be done to remove the threats of war and the barriers in '■> the way of free and secure world trade, they incline to think, Will be thought of and arranged by the statesmen and their technical ,experts; or, after these agents of sanity have done their bCst, the end will be failure, and failure will be the end. Such thinking is dangerously wrong, because it makes too nWch of official force and purpose and of unofficial too little. It sets a wide gap between peoples and Governments, across which will is ineffective and wisdom does not pass. But the truth is not only that the reconstruction of the world can be very well begun in the reconstruction tif a town, or a city, 01' a small country; it is, also, that the free discussion of major problems, which Mr Pascall has said is of "the " essence of the Rotary spirit," is the beginning of better international understanding. It is not necessary, or even desirable, for Rotary " to propound a "remedy or to inaugurate a crusade "for political and economic reform." It is enough to search out the facts without which all diagnosis of the world's ills and all proposals for their cure are more or less blind; and in such an effort to inform and clarify public opinion Rotary helps powerfully to lay the only permanent" foundation of international confidence and peace.