NATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILISATION

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21753, 8 April 1936, Page 17

NATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILISATION

TO THE EDITOR Of THE PRESS. Sir,— "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seems to me, all the uses of this world 1" With Hamlet, who was a prince, there ire many to-day who cry out the same thing. Mr Wells Newton is not the only one to wonder where the contributions to civilisation come in among those in high places. There will be no more war when individuals stop warring with one another. The lower orders in life have reason to be disgruntled with those in high places at times. In my small experience of life in more than one country I have found much “rottenness in the state of Denmark,” in so much as there has been a lack of treating the neighbour as thy self. High dignitaries of the Church think nothing of getting tradespeople to give them part of their just profits as reductions of accounts. Even people in higher places, who receive many thousands of pounds income a year, give way to their natural miserly weakness and make the poor tradesman take far less than they should for their goods. Then there is another thing that keeps the war danger around humanity—individual . fighting, mind against mind, that goes on everywhere. Mental cruelty gives birth to physical cruelty. No wonder the Master said to the rich young man—though mark you He gave him loving looks the while on account of the things he did from his youth up—“ One thing that thou lackest.” If it were not for that great example, many of us to-day would feel hopeless about things.—Yours, etc., LEONIS. Islington, April 7, 1936.