THE VOICE OF THE NATIONS.

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 194, 13 May 1922, Page 9

THE VOICE OF THE NATIONS.

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS :: . OF THE TIMES ::

Cleaning the "Sheet.” "Tho British film industry has got a ,marvellous chanco, but you have to be (careful of it. You have to deal with a rising moral consciousness among women, and they are demanding a more 'rigorous censorship of films. If you do not produce what is decent and clean you will realise that we do not mean our children’s minds to be poisoned. That is what you will, always bo up against. It is the thing that makes the country. The people- who are I making money are not making the country. The men and women who are standing but for what is clean and honest are making the country. I would rather people tried _to poison my child’s body than its mind. You may get rid of the poison in its body, but it is difficult ‘to get it out of its mind. The most precious thing in the nation is the children’s minds, and you must guard' them.”—Lady Astor, jM.P.j in a recent speech to British kinema men. -1 . Bolshevik Picture of Lloyd George. "Mr. Lloyd George has no greater (admirers than those who sit in' the •Kremlin in Moscow, But they translate his ingenuity in politics into a wider field, and are inclined to believe, when they cannot make out what ho is at, that he has hitched his wagon to some star which has not yet risen above the Moscow horizon.Downing Street for them is a lofty watch-tower where a lonely figure, with white hair ruffled by the eternal winds, sits and gazes with inhuman intensity and cunning into the farthest vistas of time. This conception of Mr. Lloyd Gteorge dominates their understanding of English policy. They consequently grossly over-estimate English consciousness of the desirability- of Russian trade.” —Mr. Arthur Ransome, recently returned from Moscow, in- the "Manchester Guardian.” / The Humour of It. "There is, for a humorous lecturer, no better audience in the world than a Scotch audience. The old standing joke about the Scotch sense of humour is mere nonsense. Yet one find's it everywhere. The reason for this lies, I think, in the well-known fact that tho Scotch are a truly educated people, not educated in the mere sense of .having been made to go to school, but in the higher 'sense of having acquired an interest in books and a respect for learning. In England the higher classes alone possess this; the working class ns a. whole know nothing of it.. But in Scotland the attitude is universal. And the more I reflect upon the subject, the more I believe that what counts most in the appreciation of humour is not nationality, but the degree of education enjoyed by the individual concerned. I do not thinkthat there is any doubt that educated people possess a far wider range of humour than the uneducated class.”— Professor Stephen Leacock, in a recent analysis of British and American

The "State-Aided Proletariat.” "Humane public sentiment will not permit people to starve. In the case of unemployment to-day, much ; of its excessive volume is due to the incidence of the war, and many/of the sufferers are men to whom the country owes its continued.existence. It would be perfectly useless, even if it were the right course to follow, to urge that relief of unemployment should cease. Nevertheless, it is the fact that tho country cannot afford to continue paying at the present rates. It is also the fact that the longer relief is continued, the greater is the deterioration of the class relieved. Moreover, there is a large class of persons whose whole object is to live as comfortably as may be without working; and under existing-conditions they perceive themselves pensioned for life. The problem of preventing the formation of what is economically known as the State-aided proletariat, or of rigidly restricting its dimensions, is os old as history. In ancient Greece, Pisistratus arranged loans to the poor in order that they \ might establish themselves fn .husbandry, and he also instituted a system of emigration and of poor relief. Aristotle, in the fourth century 8.C., against the lavish' distribution of public money by the demagogues, and urged that, relief should be given to' the unemployed for tho sole purpose of enabling them to start their own business. Help for the sick and needv he would entrust to private charity.—The London “Morning Post/ ou the unemployment problem. Why V/llson Hesitated. “The thing that daunts me and hold# me back is the aftermath of war, with all its tears and, tragedies. I came from the South, and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and terrible ruin. It is easy for, me a. President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill, who now clamour for it. It is some poor farmer’s boy or the son of some poor widow awav off in some modest community, or peihaps the scion of a great family, who will have to do the 'fighting and the dying.”—Ex-President Wilson, of U.S.A., as reported by his late Secretary, Mr. Joseph Tumulty, in a notable book just published. Internecine party Strife. ' “Nothing can alter the fact that the break-up of the Coalition, if it takes place, will not have arisen on 'a divergence of principle.’ It will have arisen from causes about which we will say no more than that they have loss to do with honourable principles than with personal dislikes and the satisfaction of personal ambitions. It may, indeed, be too late now to set things right. The last moment for putting a tolerably satisfactory patch on the tear may have passed. Be that as it may, we would urge the mischief-makers to take eome thought beyond the immediate present, and those who are inclined to set the preservation of party unity high above everything else to consider what must* fcappen ( in the immediate future if \Siey are led by the Die-hards ii to an Open quarrel with the Prime Minister and the National Liberals. —The London “Daily Telegraph” on the retwat British political oxiw*.

Woman's Legal Accountability. “The Peel case judgment has called public attention to the very curioun legal position of married women, by which they are not held responsible for certain crimes if their husbands happen to be physically present when they commit them. There is much talk now of the introduction of-a measure to clear up the position entirely. It will, perhaps, be difficult to draft, and will involve painstaking research into old statutes and musty precedents. But there is ho doubt that the women of this country would support it. They do not want privilege and protection in place of equality and justice. They do not seek to accept the responsibility for their own crimes, their own debts, or their own lives. They are citizens how, and want to take the full consequences,”—Mrs. Oliver Stracheyy in the “Sunday Russia and Genoa. , “The Russian Government is not blind to the fundamental _ difference existing between the political and economic regime of tho Soviet Republic and the bourgeois States, but believes nevertheless that an agreement for fruitful co-operation in the economic domain and in complete consonance with a • certain .section of European public opinion is absolutely possible. The Genda Ccrference differs fundamentally from all preceding (European for this reason, that no difference is to be made between victor and vanquished, between large and small States, er between Soviet and bourgeois Governments, and that, on the contrary, all tho’se attending the Conference must strive collectively and on a footing of equality for universal economic restoration.” —M. Tchitcherin, Russian Foreign Secretary, on the Genoa Conference. ’ 1 The Youngpr Set. «’ “We have talked about the younger generation as if youth were a new phenomenon that had to be named and described,' like a strange animal in the Garden of Eden. No wonder that our juniors have become .self-conscious and have begun to defend themselves. Nevertheless, the generation bcrn after the eighties has had an experience unique in our era. It has been urged, 'first by men and then by events, to discredit the statements of historians, the pictures-'of poets and novelists, and it has accepted the challenge. The result is a literature which speaks for the younger writers better, perhaps, than they speak for themselves, and this literature no reader of the 1920’s whose brain is still flexible can afford to neglect: for to pass by youth for maturity is sooner or later to lose steo with life.” —Mr. H. S. Canby, in the "Century Magazine.” Democratic Only in Masquerade. “We hear from officml Labour ranks ,a cry that Labour candidates were defeated because of ‘sectarian’ hostilitvi This is nonsense. Why, in one city constituency, where a Labour man was rejected, he was replaced by a Catholic candidate whose platform was avowedly a clerical one. It was not by Orangemen that Labour was routed, but by tens of thousands of people who began to see that Official Labour was too corrupt to five. Australia has nothing to fear from Labour Government. But it has everything to fear from unclean government which usurps the name of Labour, and is democratic only in masquerade. Such a party is sure of downfall, because the public of this country soon grows intolerant of what is bred in the mud. Our voters will not easily acquiesce in practices which rig votes, . stuff ballot boxes, and reduce all politics to the one principle of ‘honour among thieves.” — The Sydney “Sunday Times” 'on the recent Labour defeat in New South Wales. China and the Washington Conference. “The outcome of the conference as regards its Far Eastern programme appears to vindicate the wisdom of China’s policy of moderation. While much still remains to be done to disentangle the tangled situation concerning the relations between China and Foreign Powers, considerable progress was achieved by the conference in the direction China hoped it would travel. ' The concerted affirmation by the Powers chiefly interested in China of the principles of respect, for her territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence, and for the ‘Open Door’ in China, while perhaps adding little new to their past protestations, will nevertheless make .it more difficult for any of them in future to pursue a policy incompatible*with these principles.- ThA treaties concluded and the resolutions adopted at the conference concerning the relations between Chinn and foreign Powers will certainly stimulate .the people in China to redouble their efforts at national consolidation and rehabilitation. “Tlie value of the Washington Conference is. however. much greater than the sum total of its treaties and resolutions. This is particularly true as regards its Far Eastern programme. The frank discussion of the many phases in the Far East, quite apart from its outcome, has itself been of incalculable benefit in that it helped to bring out to the open the dangers lurking therein, Bv this process of ventilation not a few apprehensions and suspicions between the different Powers were dissipated. I nm glad of this opportunity to sav that the successful conclusion of the Far Eastern programme of the Washington Conference was, as undoubtedly of its naval programme also, due in a yery large measure to the cordial collaboration of the British Empire Delegation. The Chinese people are grateful for the spontaneous sympathy and support which Mr. Balfour and his able colleagues extended to China on many questions of vital importance to her well-being. The generous offer to return the Weihaiwci at the time when the question of the foreign leased territories was under discussion is a notable instance. The deliberations of the conference have shown that there is a singular community of interests between China and the British Ernpjro on many important aspects of the Fai Eastern problem.”—Dr. Wellington Koo, the Chinese Minister in London, and one of China’s plenipotentiaries at tho Washington Conference.