VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 224, 9 June 1923, Page 13

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

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

A Question for the Irish. “It is for the Free State Government to choose its moment and to draw up its own terms, and it is unlikely at this stage to go back upon Its determination that any terms of settlement must admit that constitutionalism has triumphed over, and ought to triumph over, mere violence. —“Westminster Gazette.” The New Naval Base.

“We have no one who can tell up , with authority whether some more Squadrons of aeroplanes for home defence are more essential than a better dock at Singapore.. It looks very much as if we were in the position pf a man who. with a limited amount of money to spend, was building a billiard-room when the drains of his house were out of order.” —- MajorGeneral Sir F. B. Maurice. President Harding oh the Outlook. “There is no need to worry about international affairs. I can tell you with s measure of pride that they were never better than they aro to-day. perhaps the United States is not doing nil some of our friends in Europe deEire, but I predict that it will be the verdict of Europe when she has righted herself, as she sure will, that .the United States is the most just nation in the world.”—President Harding. “A Freak of irony.” ‘ ‘By a freak of irony the Polish Government has decided to make an exhibition of folly by demolishing a famous piece of Russian ecclesiastical architecture, namely, the Orthodox Cathedral' Warsaw. On May 3 it is proposed to begin the work of demofition. partly because the architecture is Russian and not Polish, partly to vindicate Polish spite against Russia. For Poles in one breath to protest •gainst the Russian persecution of the Roman Catholic Church and to emulate the same spirit themselves against the Orthodox Churdh makes one despair of reason in the hysterical parts I oF’Europe.”—London '“Observer. To Carnarvon. “Lord Carnarvon enjoyed but a few months of celebrity, but his. name will have a long remembrance. His sudden attachment to the cult of Egyptology converted what might have been an ordinary dilettante life into one of persevering unseen work in the interests of knowledge. Sixteen years unremarked digging; then the treasure half-disclosed but manifestly rich beyond all hopes; and then death before the full reward could be known: It will be a lasting tale of irony and pathos, but pot tragedy. That first thrilling glimpse of the tomb’s interior had alone stamped a life with success.” —The “Observer.” **An Old Socialist’s” Awakening. i “I am an old Socialist and spent many years in trying to find a ,way I out of our industrial morass. Mr. Ford has found a better way. His way is in closer touch, with (human nature, is more harmonious with the facts. He has found in time what I found too late, that the masses of the people, spoken of as the wage-earners, or the wage slaves, or the workers, - are a figment of the enthusiastic reformer’s brain. Democracy is described as the rule of the ' majority. But the fact is, the majority do not want to rule. They will not take the trouble ; they are incapable of the effort j they do not want to be “bothered.” ‘ What they do want is a fairly comfortable and not too laborious living, with plenty of simple pleasure ana amusement. The masses are not ambitious. They prefer to be directed and led.”—Mr. Robert Blatchford, in the “Sunday Chronicle.” Britain's Aerial impotence.

“ ‘Defence’ is manifestly no. defence when it leaves us in the position, as regards the air, that our handful oi machines occupies to the corresponding French armament- To point out this is not to treat France as a,n enemy, hut merely to apply aerially the criterion, which before the war was automatically used in judging of naval questions of the most formidable European Power. The present position amounts to aerial impotence, and with aerial impotence who shall venture to say how meaningless either naval or military strength may prove? Air strength is a sine qua non to both, and not merely as an' intimate adjunct of their respective forces, but as an independent—and, it may very >-ell be, controlling—factor.”—London “Observer.”

Bolsheyik Blood Lust. “Blood is the food of the true revolutionary. The Bolsheviks, having gratified their thirst at the expense of the lives of the greatest soldiers, administrators, and intellectual leaders of Russia, are now turning their attention to the Church. There can be no getting away from .the aim, though the motives are perhaps obscure. It may be that the illness of Lenin is now giving a free rein to those spirits whose intense savagery is unwatered by guile or policy. It may be that fear is at the back of their organised cruelty—that fear which waits on evil men to drive them to excess and ultimately to perdition. At any rate, the murder of Monsignor Budkiewicz is no isolated act of passion or revenge, but part of a deliberate campaign for destroying the Christian religion and exterminating its servants throughout the length and breadth of Russia.” —"Morning Post.” •'A Gentle Teacher.”

"I believe that bereavement is the deepest of all initiations. In performing this office it partly explains itself. Without it. I think we should never penetrate much below the surface of life. As has been said, ‘The life that has not known and accepted sorrow is strangely crude and untaught. It can neither help nor teach, for it has never learned. The life that has spurned the lesson of sorrow, or failed to read it aright, is cold and hard ; but the life that has been disciplined by sorrow is courageous and full of holy and gentle love. Without sorrow life glares. It has no halftones nor merciful shadows. Sorrow a gentle teacher, and reveals many things that would otherwise be hard to understand.” —Dean Inge, in the “Evening Standard.”

The Voice of Britain. “AH the leaders, or responsible spokesmen of all parties and of all interests, in Great Britain are united in their opposition to the French adventure in the Ruhr. Amongst the ‘elite,’ indeed, it is not a debatable issue. Popular opinion may be less decisively divided, but that is only because its leaders have not yet spoken out; When they speak, Great Britain will be, within a week, as unanimous as it was in August, 1914. It is obviously important that on this point there, should be no misunderstanding in France.” —“The New Statesman.' Asking For More.

“To fight, by organisation or otherwise, for a better salary is by no means necessarily selfish narrow sense. On the contrary,? it may well be proof of unselfishness; teachers, likp the rest of us, have wives .and children to support, »nd ‘to ask for more’ on behalf of one’s dependants is an honourable, if distasteful. duty. We doubt whether any class of the community lives .morg simply, wastes less money on trivialities, or spends more, of themselves and’ of their substance, on the things that matter.”—London “Times.” ChurchiH’s War Book.

“Mr. Churchill’s book is the best that has y«jt appeared on the war. It is a frank revelation of a powerful and attractive personality, it. has a superb sense of drama, and the matter and manner are equally matched. There will be much controversy over certain passages in the story that he tells, but the book indisputably places Mr. Churchill among the leading literary figures of our time. A great book, a book to be read and reread, to be pondered over, and above all to enjoy, for its incomparable style.”—“A Student of Politics,” in the “Daily Chronicle.’ . ' r * Security for the Asking.

“If France wants security honestly and with no arriere-pensee, she can have it for the asking, not indeed m the form of an exclusive AngloFrench pact, but as part of a wider agreement which would secure her the guarantee not of one State only, but of many; though France must remember that there can be no security for people who cherish ill-will and mean fears. As for reparations, everyone knows that France would accept with thinly disguised alacrity’ her share of a total of fifty milliards, and most people still believe that, given reasonable conditions, Germany could in time pay forty. With Allied debt cancellation available as inducement, there is manifest room for an ( arrangement there.” —“The Nation.” Kipling on Germany.

“We do not at all believe that Germany is disarmed, or that she will ever be disarmed without supervision infinitely more drastic than that which has bgen exercised in the past. ' We hold that it would have been better for the future if England had gone in side by side with France and Belgium to obtain the fullest reparation and security that was possible. You will say: This being so, why does not public opinion assert itself? The answer lies, primarily, in our financial exhaustion. It appears to-us that the bulk of post-war indebtedness is upon our . shoulders. < Ou r taxation is fantastic—Oriental —in its severity. This is a condition which makes men, whatever their opinions may be, cautious in committing themselves to any action that might involve, or be , represented as involving, increased expenditure.”—Mr.. Rudyard Kipling, in an interview given in Paris. Experiments in Revolutions.

“At first sight it would seem thrj.t the Russian and the Italian experi ments came near to cancelling each other out. In Russia people are ordered and disciplined in the interests of Communism and of a strangely bellicose internationalism. In Italy they are ordered and disciplined in the interests of anti-Commui.vsin. and of a not very pacific nationalism. In both case* there is reason to believe that the mass of. the population have no desire to b© thus ordered and disciplined. Signor Mussolini is scornful of universal suffrage and of parliamentary government, but what is the substitute he offers? Only that a country should be ruled by that group of people who succeed in massing the maximum or force at a given moment in the vital centres of its national life. Once in power, he says, ‘a party is obliged to fortify and defend itself against all, which is exactly what the Bolsheviks say In other words, Russians and Italians alike, oven if they grow still more tired of ‘order, hierarchy, and discipline’ than they ever were of liberty, can only hope for a change of government if ' some other group masses greater force at the points.”—*‘Westminster Gazette. Nothing New In Mussolini.

“The Italian Prime Minister is very young, and he .seems to be most youthful of all m his evident belief that lie is going to wake a sen sation among European Liberals b> his t a -v about liberty. Someone should tell him that we have been listening to it for at least forty years-our Carlyles and Frondes used to give it us in strong doses—and that if he wants to hear it in good English vernacular, without any of this new-fangled Latin adornment, he has only to go in tain London clubs and listen to old gentlemen talking about Labour, b where in the world will be find adherents of ‘order, hierarchy and discipline.’ It is fortunate for Signer Mustolini that certain Italians of a previous generation and certain statesmen of other countries had a for this ‘corpse called Liberty for otherwise he would not be where he_is or have the chance of making his.experiment upon a nationca his That experiment—to judge from hi. own account of to bo £ very ancient one of capturing machine of government bv a coup d’etat. There are examples ofr. rn the history of almost every country and nearly always it has a bad end. for ‘the corpse of liberty has an astonishing habit of coming to Me. —Mr. J. A. Spender, in the 'Westminster Gazette."