VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 35, 4 November 1922, Page 11

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS :: :: OF THE TIMES :: ::

•‘Burnt to a Cinder." “With the Greek armies swept into the sea and Kemal master of Smyrna, the centre of gravity of the Near Eastern problem has shifted inevitably to Europe. The fate of Anatolia is settled, and there is no longer any question of Mr. Lloyd George or M. Venizelos pulling King Constantine’s chestnuts out of the lire; the chestnuts are burnt to cinders.” —The “New Statesman.” , f Cauliflowers and Middlemen. “When I buy cauliflowers in the London market I lin'd that I pay fully twelve times as much for. them as that -which the farmer receives, in the first instance. Unless the farming Industry is wise enough to organise its own sales- and to market its own produce we shall not get rid of this huge margin between the price received by the producer and that received by'the ultimate seller.” —Professor Arnold Lupton, to the British Association. i / , Broken Porcelain. -• “There can be few Englishmen who do not recognise for their country in tho Near Eastern crisis a masterpiece of humiliation. It is not only that the Treaty' of Sevres is in ruins. 'lt is that all can now perceive the crass folly of ever expecting that piece of porcelain (fit only for a museum) to jßurvijse even its first contact with an all too real world. It was an attempt at disposing of human fortunes which was bound to fail unless the sequence of cause and effect had been numbered Hmong the miscellaneous casualties of tho Great War. All geography declared against its expectation of life; all history tror< Trajan to Tino said the same thing.”—J. L. Garvin, in the “Observer.” j A New Motor Fuel. Many interests have been actively at work for some years in Great Britain on the attempt to discover a motor fuel which .would be essentially cheaper than petrol. At least one of these efforts is said to be likely to be crowned with success. A British distilling company recently announced that the experiments which it had been carrying out for two years on the production of a motor fuel had yielded highly satisfactory results. This fuel is produced by mixing crude whisky with an extract from a vegetable of Indian origin. The mixture can be sold profitably at about one-half the existing price of petrol. A ‘mixing plant has already been set to work in London, and is affording regular supplies of this new fuel to a limited number of customers. Further mixing plants are to be erected at Liverpool and Glasgow. Intellect in Industry. t/ “We had a flying start in the first lap of the industrial race. We are running now on our merits, and wo, shall require the utmost of that brain-craft without which neither hand-craft nor change-craft can hold the day. Room must be made for the intellectual life to pursue its instinctive activities, to enlist its chosen recruits, to developaccording to the law of its own being. The times have been That, when the brains were out, the man would die. And it is even upon such times that we are launching the barque of State and Empire.”—“The Observer.”

The Spark to the Powder. “The success of the Nationalist Turks, small as it is in comparison with tho military events to which the world was accustomed a few years ago. Is just such an episode as may load to tremendous results. The assassination of the Archduke Francis Fefdinand was the spark that exploded Europe in the Great. War —tho recovery of Smyrna by the triumphal firces of an Unexpectedly revived Turke'y may lead to another conflagration, unless tho danger is recognised and dealt with firmly. I have confidence that this British public will realise that a pew and menacing situation has suddenly come into being, and will support the British Government on any positive pojjcy it may adopt to Realise the danger and prevent it from spreading into Europe.”—Mr. Morgenthau, late U.S. Ambassador in Constantinople.

’■Profitaering in Intellect.” ‘‘That we have, for example, in the Bar and. the medical profession two of the most highly protected vocations in the world, does not obscure the fact that the members' of . those combjnations depend'upon their own exertions and ability in a very special sense. Combination does nothing towards a levelling-up of reward. But with other workers in the intellectual field the level is all too .painfully apparent. Such men as those engaged in our universities in teaching and in research are poorly paid, judged by almost any standard. In comparison , with their value to the commonwealth, which cannot be set out in terms of monetary reward, their treatment is shameful. Tire community is profiteering in intellect. It takes advantage of a, man’s love of his work to withhold reasonable payment. To be sure, the work itself is its own reward, for it rsT a part of life itself.”—The London ‘‘Daily Telegraph.”

Tne Magic Fluid. “Electricity is not only the cleanest and most effcient servant that mankind ever had, it is also the cheapest. If works for less than a coolie’s wage, and its wages are going down every day while its efficiency is being constantly increased. In the country where our food grows is the best of ah places to eat it. Sending it to the city costs much more than getting it out of the ground, and it has lost a lot of its flavour by the time it has reached the ultimate consumer. Also, there is not room to live in the city, especially for children. They can’t have real homes. They can’t stretch and grow, physically' and spiritually,, as human children should. The city has almost destroyed the home, but it has provided other advantages which the modern man can hardly do without. If only these advantages could bo brought to the country village and the farm —well, watch what electricity is going to do next.” —Mr. Charles A. Ciffin, head of the General Electrio Company, in an interview.

Amateur Diplomacy. “Things have never gone right since Downing Street virtually abolished, the Foreign Office and put itself in direcj. charge of foreign affairs. We have lost our sure touch in foreign politics ever since were elbowed aside by the politicians. Near East problems are much too critical to be handled any longer by amateurs. Let us get back to the essential basis of Near East diplomacy—a sound judgment which Jakes account of our Imperial responsibilities and a clear understanding with France.”—London “Daily Mail. To Remove Rust. This is the advice of an expert, on how to remove rust: Make a solution, one part sulphuric acid to ten parts *rf water and dip in it the parts from which it is desired to. remove rust. Next dip them in a hath'of hot lime •water and keep them in it until they have become so hot that they dry immediately on being taken out. Then rub the parts with dry bran or sawdust, and they will be found to be perfectly clean. Near East Diplomacy. “It is useless for Mr. Lloyd-George to imagine that by perfervid appeals and semi-official statements he can retrieve the colossal blunder he has made in the Middle East. He embarked upon a grandiose policy for annihilating the Turkish Empire by means of a Greek Army. Unfortunately, however, for all his schemes, he has failed The Greek Army has vanished, aqd with .it§" disappearance Mr. Lloyd George’s schemes have crumpled up.” —The “Morning Post.” A Parliament of Man. “The League of Nations has been built and launched as an ark of safety from perils whose reality gains a daily increasing vividness. Its architects have too often the air of reluctance to entrust it with their own fortunes. If it is to be a determining factor in the world’s peace, the predominant poor pies must set the example in nourishing its authority and equipping it with nervous strength. The Assembly is fill of embryonic promise. It is nearer to a Parliament of Man than anything that has been seen before in history. In its records there can be traced a spirit of altruism and an, incipient capacity for common and disinterested action which cannot be too highly esteemed in the midst of so much that is of more depressing-omen elsewhere.” —The London “Observer.” The Church’s Great Mistake. “It was the Church which . would have taken the lead in repudiating the offensive doctrine of the' inferiority of women. It had most to gain from the release of the energies and enthusiasm of women for- its service, for whatever doubts there might be as to the fitness of wbmen for the secular field, as doctors, scholars, teachers, barristers* legislators, and so on, there can be none as to their peculiar equipment for spiritual They have the genius for service ; they have in an infinitely larger measure than men the sense of spiritual life, and their gifts of eloquence have made Johnson’s gibe about women preachers a monument of foolishness. If the Church is perishing, it is perishing not as Mr. Bourchier said the other day because persons are not masculine enough, but because it is-the last refuge of the anti"quated doctrine that it is a men’s club with barbed wire entanglements to keep out the women from its holy places.”—Mr. A. G. Gardiner, in the London “Evening Star.” The Dardanelles —and the Pact. 1 "We have no more rights and no more duties in the Straits than our other Allies, but we seem to have a clearer view than some of them of the disastrous consequences of the return of the Turk to Europe. No arrangement which replaced the Turk in control of the Straits would suit us. and it seems now that tho half-meastire of leaving the Sultan at Constantinople was an error. But we made it clear that this concession was dependent upon Turkish good behaviour, and any attempt on the part of the Turks to recover their old power of doing harm would absolve us of all engagements with''them.” —Lt.-Col. Replngton. in the “Daily Telegraph.”

“L.C.’s” Limitations. “He knew so little about, and be-, lieved so.little in, most forms of expert knowledge that ho would seek it, when he wanted it, anywhere but in the proper department. During his first year as Prime Minister he evinced a strange timidity towards the. Press, and resorted often to undignified means to win its favour. ..He had not discovered, as, he did later, that the Press of Britain is, on the whole, a thing of honour and sound breeding, and that the way to earn its support is to earn its respect by independence. Also the journalist with his up-to-date knowledge in capsules wiv- +he kind of purveyor of intelligence t’mt his tastes required, and he somet ;, j cs relied on him to the exclusion of better authorities. It was said, not without truth at the titne, that the Government of Britain was Mt. Lloyd'George and the last journalist he talked with.” —Mr. John Buchan, in his “History of the Great War.”

American Homes—and British. “Whenever the congestion is escaped from, the love of Nature and of art refreshingly shows itself, and that in two ways rare in domestic England. Housing has some real relation to architecture. The effort everywhere appears—to add the veranda, to give,-individuality to the home, and to avoid the slavish reproduction and in-building which stamp the ordinary British suburban street with sameness and make it lean towards squalor. And the freedom of open-air life is accentuated by the entire absence of enclosures. The garden plots stand free to each other and to the road, and the passer-by walks, so to speak, among the roses and the flowering shrubs, while this form of trust in the people seems to have made a destructive theft and vandalism unknown. All over the United States this excellent un-Englishness appears; get hut a little within the Canadian border, the fence and the exclusiveness again appear.”-—Lord Shaw of Dumfermline, in his “American Impressions.”