VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 95, 16 January 1926, Page 13

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

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

War Must Always be Cruel.

“Attempts to make war appear humane. which it can never be, can only lead to deception and disappointment, and bv presenting war in a false light are likely to make it more frequent. We British are beginning to be alive to the fact that war is growing more and more brutal and more -and more destructive, because we are also becoming alive to the fact that the application of aircraft to war has brought us militarily into the Continent. All our southern towns, and most of all London, will, with the women, children, aged and sick in them, be exposed to bombing if we are engaged in a Continental war, and no codes will remove that danger. If we understand that fact and its implications we are more likely to avoid war than if we bury our heads in codes. This does not mean that codes are of no use. The Hague Conventions, in spite of the breaches made in them, were of real value during the World War in preventing avoidable suffered; but I have no faith in conventions which attemnt to prevent the use of the most deadly weapons when nations arc fighting for their existence.”—Major-General F. B. Maurice. Exercise and Business. “Thousands upon thousands of valuable, unreplacable hours are wasted on golf links and tennis courts by elderlybusiness men who have made a shibboleth of the word exercise. They would be better employed physically, professionally, and commercially if they confined their muscular activities to to week-end pleasure games, and these in great moderation, and devoted the sacrificial hours to more profitable affairs, for the idea that a middle-aged man can regain health and retain his business merely by tiring himself out is a fallacy that has been demonstrated over and over again. Fresh air by all means; and that can be obtained bywalking to the office or part of the way in the morning, which is far different from the violent running of the tennis court or the physical exertion of the golf course. Many business houses have lost their respected chiefs owing to the fatal exactions of the exercise tyranny, and many more businesses have lost not only their chiefs but their business as well.”—“DailyExpress.” Knowledge and Science.

“There is a high measure of respect to be paid to science. We must realise that the first object of science is not to produce utilitari-ir. results: these may come by the way. and wc accept them with gratitude. But the hunger for the knowledge of nature is integral in man; it i■■ a mark of his heritage and a distinction shared by no other creature. To .cards that knowledge science produces an ever-increasing store of information, and in this is her chief nobility.”—“The Spectator.” Class Criticism Useless.

‘‘The general sense that something is wrong when money is being spent freely on luxury cars and expensive dresseswhile large numbers go short of boots and clothes, is perfectly just„ and we cannot complain if Labour hammers in the moral so long as it does not propose a fabulous remedy. But. if we are thinking of economic results, we must extend our view from the small number of rich people who squander money unwisely to the mass of people who do the great bulk of the spending. A nation which seeks evenly balanced production, with priority for the necessaries ofxlife, is bound to ask not only whether it is spending too much on motor-cars, but whether it can afford a drink bill of four hundred millions a year, and it seems to us that Labour, too. ought to be willing to ask this question. The short truth of the matter is that a mere class approach to these questions carries us almost nowhere.’’—“Westminster Gazette.’’

Russia's Future Trade. “Trade with ‘Russia’ to-day appears insignificant only because the yastuess of Russia’s remaining territories obscures the relatively greater importance in density of population and in consuming power of the new national States. ‘Russia’ in the pre-war sense is the greatest buver in Europe. Whereas Great Britain makes a fair display as seller to Russia in the narrower, present sense, she is hopelessly beaten by Germanv in selling to Finland, Poland, and the’minor Baltic countries. In the new business year Russia in the present, narrow sense is also going to prove a big buyer; and it is to be hoped that antipathy to her political and economic system and resentment over past losses will not be allowed to reduce the British share.”—Mr. Robert Crozier Long, in the “Fortnightly Review.” The Beautiful Thing.

“It is probably true that nothing we know so stirs the heart and kindles the mind as the sight or the thought of a beautiful thing. Life, in sunshine or rain, is beautiful. We look out upon the world on a summer’s day and see this age-old Earth with its youth renewed, and we think it like a drcam. We walk through a wood when the red leaves are falling, and we think it all a miracle. We look out across the fields when they are white with snow, and are thrilled at the sight of all this majesty. And then awakes the joy of spring, when all the Earth comes leaping up, and the wonder is too great for words. Perhaps, after all, the world is just a dream, God’s' dream."—Air. Arthur Mcc, in the “Children’s Magazine ”

Using Their New Leisure. “It may be that the reduced working hours in some trades have for the time being put a financial strain upon those trades. But they can recover, and we should avoid anything tending to drive back the worker to long hours of labour. The worker, however, will lose the greater gifts of leisure if ht spends the whole of his resting time merely in pleasure, recreations, sports, entertainments, or the social joys of life These must have their place But to sacrifice all study to these other attractions is to make a lamentable mistake and to forfeit Hie prospect of that degree of improvement in the mentalitv of the worker which reduced hours of labour should help to -ecure.” —Rt. Hon. J. R. Clvnes, M P., in the “Yorkshire Evening News,;*-

To Queen Alexandra.

“Her personal beauty’ and grace, her exquisite dignity, her tender and boundless charity were all part of the national treasure. Love and pride weie equally mingled in every greeting she evoked. Her coming, in all the glorv of her girlhood, to a new land and a new life, is enshrined in a happy and familiar poem. But she became herself a poem to the country’ which took her to its heart, adored her loveliness, learned to know the wealth of her womanly’ goodness, and shared the sunshine and shadows of tier lot for two generations. She was an unchanging symbol of all that is most apt and most worthy to please. And it became realised in the course of years that allied with her beauty was a generosity, a quickness of sympathy. no whit less intense or distinctive. In these later times, when all duties of State had devolved elsewhere, Queen Alexandra gained a new reverence as a Spirit of Pity’, the friend and seeker of all suffering, the inspiration and helper of every effort undertaken in the name of a common humanity.”—“’The Observer” (London).

A Knotty Problem. “To find a technical basis for naval disarmament is comparatively simple. Within limits, one battleship can be measured fairly accurately against another, and so with cruisers and destrovers and submarines. That was why the qualified success of the Wash, inton Conference in 1921 was made possible at all. The problem of land armaments is about ten times as difficult. How are you to measure the effective value of a nation’s fighting forces? Tlus does not mean that we are up against impossibilities, but it does mean that we are faced with a proposition most extraordinarily’ difficult. Locarno has partially cleared the road—only partially, for the problem of Russia still remains—to real disarmament, but we must move down that road at a steady pace, not dash enthusiastically for the goal regardless of obstacles that will trip us up soon enough if we ignore them.”—Mr. H. Wilson Harris in the “Daily News.” A Modern Pharisee.

“It is not easy to think of any parallel to President Coolidge’s amazing address to the New Y’ork Chamber of Commerce except a certain notorious prayer. The author of that prayer also thanked God that he was not as other men are, and recorded with the same smirking, self-satisfaction his financial righteousness and his virtuous self-re-straint. We recognise, however coldly, America’s technical right to adopt the attitude which she has adopted—to withdraw herself from the troubles of the world she came to help, and, rich herself, to extract from the poverty of the Old World the uttermost farthing of her legal dues which she can obtain. When President Coolidge makes this attitude, which it is just possible to defend as not legally incorrect, a matter for eulogy’ on high moral grounds, it is impossible not to remind him that a single gesture on the part of America would have been of infinitely more value to suffering Europe than all the minute and dubious benefactions which he has been at such pains to collect. If to help Europe was really the aim of America, she had merely’ to write off her debt, as this far poorer country was prepared to do in the case of her debtors. That she did not choose to do so is her affair, and no business of ours. ; She was within her rights in refusing to do it. But in refusing she forfeited all claim to a halo; and the attempt to don it now is, in European eyes, not merely ridiculous, but a little odious.”’ —“Daily News” (London). Try a Little Thinking.

“Take some knotty or thorny problem and arrange to do a piece of genuinely hard thinking upon it for a few moments (at least) every day. You will soon find the scope of your mental capacity enlarging, the walls of vour mind will move like elastic to the touch of strength; you will make the ancient discovery of the man who wrote, ‘While I mused the fire burned.’ In obeving the above counsel realise that there is a difference between the man who thinks and the man who thinks that he thinks. The man who thinks is a thinker. His' method is to subject a new truth to investigation, to correlation with other truths, for months, possibly for years, ere he heralds it bv breaking into print. The man who thinks that he thinks allows his thoughts to rush from his mind without so much as a shirt on!” —Mr. John Aloore in “The New Outlook.”

Capital and Industry "Money is worthy of its hire. No more, no less. If the cost of the hiring is going to make profitable industrv in this country impossible, then it’is in the common interest, as much of finance as of industry, to modify the terms of hire. There is nothing in the Conservative creed which has in the past, or should in the future, support one section of the community at the expense of the .remainder. Naturally Conservative thought will require to be convinced that the- remedy really lies in the direction I propose before action is taken. The guiding line in respect to industrial legislation should be an appreciation that co-operation is the natural spirit in British industry, and that factors which make co-operation difficult or impossible should be removed. Should there be any vested financial interests which stand in the way of the rehabilitation of industry in this country, they can best be dealt with by the Conservatives. The price of money must be reduced —that is the prime essential.” —Air. S. S. Hammersley, ALP.

On Personal Contact. “May I add a proposal that we who have the responsibility of employers, return to the old spirit of industry and take trouble to get to know each man in our works, to gfain liis respect, to lead, to guide, to help, and to serve him, as our fathers did in the days before that curse of modern industry -the Limited Liability Company? It is mv privilege to direct 1500 men in Sheffield Tliev are 1500 friends, and 1500 honest helpers, all trying hard with me to win through our common difficultv, and succeeding.”—Mr. Af. R. Alain price, of Brown, Bayley’s Steel Works, Limited, in a letter to “The Times.