VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 119, 13 February 1926, Page 15

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS :: :: OF THE TIMES K :•

The Other Fellow’s Point of View. » “What.is the root cause of industrial strife, unrest, and of enmity between nations ? Or, at any rate, if it’s not the root cause, what is a great contributory cause of these things ? I suggest it’s the failure of so many of us to see things from the other man’s standpoint. Here is a man engaged in some great enterprise. Thousands of pounds of his capital are sunk there. He has hundreds of men, women, and children dependent on his brains and energy and acumen. There comes a strike in one particular union. The cause of it did not commence with him or in his works. Quite likely he is willing to meet his men and grant them what they request. But a general strike is called, and thev must be loyal. I wonder how manv men who 'come out’ just then ever try to ‘sit where he sits’,? His works idle, his contracts and engagements unfulfilled, his creditors pressing him, his bank worrying him.”—Rev. P. Stanley Eley, of Barnsley, in the “Christian World Pulpit.” A Deadly Rot.

“If our working folk are pauperised until they lose the will to work, or :f they follow revolutionary leaders into ways of violence and destruction—l do not believe they will—then, indeed, we shall see the passing of England and all that was good and gracious in its life. Our Oriental Empire will be a flamin;’ anarchy in which the weak and innocent will perish. The world will lose its strongest rock of defence against brutality and tyranny and the ethics of the jungle. For even our enemies look to us, not as people of great virtue, perhaps, but as strong guardians of law and order. If we give way, th'! outposts of civilisation will be driven in. Is such a thing possible? Yes, in my belief, now, it is possible. But only if forces of revolt on one side come to an absolute clash with forces of fear and cruelty on the other side. Only if there is no statesmanship, no sanity, no spirit of compromise and common sense on all sides. I believe, as thousands of moderate men believe, that there is still time—but not much time—to stop the rot in our social state.”—Sir Philip Gibbs, in the “Sunday Times.” Death on the Highway.

“Deaths on the roads of Great Britain in 1921 were at the rate of about ten every day, or one every two hours or so. The rate in 1925 appears to be about fifteen every day, or one every ninety-six minutes. As new licenses are issued every day to boys, girls, drunkards, and cripples, without any conditions as to competence, nothing is more certain than that the road deathrate will soon rise to one per hour. To 5000 deaths per annum, add at least ■25.000 serious maimings and 55,000 minor casualties, and you get the dimensions of a problem of terrible character. If railways killed and wounded people after this faslyon there would be a great outcry. "It is high time the motorist was denied the right to kill on payment of a trifling penalty. The theory is that the hoot is a command which must be obeyed. It is a monstrous doctrine. .• . .”—Sir L. Cbiozza Money, in the “Sunday Express.” ’ • On Church Reunion. “When it comes to sympathetic relations, there certainly lias been a great advance among the various branches of the churches of Christendom. 'J he hostility and the competition of former days is largely disappearing, for which we may all be grateful, but as to organic union, that is undoubtedly just as far away as ever. It is not even in prospect. Many of us cannot see that in the present state of religion organic union is even desirable. What we do want is a close federation of all religious forces to carry on works of political and social reform, and also to develop a genuine fellowship, but more than that we cannot expect.”—The Bishop of London, in an interview with Dr. Conrad, recorded in the “Congregationalist of America.” Foretelling the Future.

"The world to-day is, far more than wc are all aware, in a state of high temperature which produces many moods, sometimes of pessimism and deep resentment. What the world is in urgent need of is a rest cure, a change of air and scene. Many ask where can they obtain that change. Apart from religion (here is nature’s human love, friendship, music, and great books. We can escape, if we care, to a region of high, enduring, satisfying experiment to which books can lift us. A great power of. renewal wi/ald come to English life if a number of people found strength in ths high world to which great English literature could lift us.”—The Archbishop of York, at Leeds University. The Joy .of Boole Giving.

“The extent and power of human inference cannot be considered fully known as yet, and it is unwise for the law to condemn people for attempting to forecast the future as if that were so manifestly impossible as to be ipso facto fraudulent. Admittedly there are certain ridiculous superstitions—as if human destiny could be determined by the fall of playingcards or bv the position of planets—but the extent to which forecasting of the future can be achieved is a matter for scientific inquiry. There is nothing absurd in the idea. A railway time-table predicts the trains at least a month ahead. An astronomer can predict eclipses several centuries in advance. Some experts succeed in foretelling the weather for, say, 24 hours. And statesmen attempt to foresee the result of an election or the probable attitude of a self-govern-ing State. So some power of prediction is known to exist, though manifestly subject to uncertainty.”—Sir Oliver Lodge, in the London “Times.” Bird Value to Trees.

"The giver of a well-chosen book is blessed in this, as in no other, gift,” savs the leading article in question. “He mav carry it home with him and may himself enjoy it before bidding it farewell: he mav write in it his own as well as bis friend’s name, thus perpetuating his good wishes and earning for himself remembrance, not for an hour only, but on many an evening far awav. A flv-leaf inscription, rediscovered long after the writer of it is forgotten, proves again and again to be the kindliest and the least selfconscious of epitaphs. How much plea, santer. alter all, than a hundred things to smoke or a pound of foad to cat I How much more amusing to send on its adventures some essay in immortality, however frail, however imperfect. than to lavish upon a well-fed ac. quaintance goods which are by name ‘ncrishable.’ ” —"Times” (London). Syndication.

“The service that birds perform in protecting woodland trees is more nearly indispensable to man than any.other benefit they confer on him. . . . Were the natural enemies of forest insects annihilated, every tree in our woods would be threatened with destruction, and man would he powerless to prevent

the calamity. He might make shift to save, some orchard or shade trees; he might find means to raise some garden crops; but the protection of all the trees in all the woods would be beyond his powers. Yet this herculean task ordinarily is accomplished as a matter of course by birds and other insectivorous creatures, without trouble or expense to man, and without appreciable injury to his great woodland interests.”

“Syndication, whether in the iron and steel industries or in those numerous other undertakings in which similar results might be expected, is by no means easy of achievement. In the first place, the temperament of the British manufacturer is intensely individualistic. He prefers independence with a modest competence to disciplined membership of a larger unit even when

—E. H. Forbush, State Entomologist of Massachusetts, in “Useful Bitds’ and Their Protection.’’

The Wasted “Dole.” “Whatever views one mav hold about the merits of Sir Alfred Mond’s own scheme for subsidising work rather than idleness, no one who has watched intelligently the operations of the Unemployment Insurance Acts will denv Hie truth of his general proposition that the present unimaginative application of the so-called ‘dole’ has created a situation in which ‘human flesh and blood is deteriorating every day before our very eyes.’ ’’—“Daily News’” (London).

it would make his income larger and more secure. But there is a considerable difference between a love of independence rooted in tradition and that love of adventure which, in industry as well as in other spheres, was once regarded as a peculiarly British trait. And it is the former that constitutes the real obstacle to syndicalism. In the second place, a

syndicated industry would demand qualities from the leaders which differ materially from those which ate now necessary in industry,”—Prom Jiound Table-tt

The People’s Libraries. “It is always a debatable question how far the Establishment of public free libraries, where books can be easily borrowed, help or hinder the sale of books. There may, of course, be some few persons who, when they have borrowed a book to read, have no further interest. It is, however, the very general experience of public librarians that people, when they have read a book, are sufficiently interested to read it again, and in that case they would nearly always buy a copy which they can then keep for their own reading or for their friends. There is also the further consideration that in any case the reading of a book helps on and encourages the reading of othef books. On the whole, therefore, it is safer to conclude that the public libM rary, so far from lessening or hindering, the private purchase of books, rather supplements the defects of the home' library.”—From the “Bookseller and the Stationery Trades Journal.” rresh Air for the Minds.

“We have taught our people to de* cipher print. We have not yet taught ’ them how to read. We try to do that in our universities, but the percentage of our congested democracy passing,, through a university must always be comparatively small. The library can—indeed, must—do what the university cannot. What kind of mental atmosphere is our population daily absorbing, as unconscious perhaps of its effects as it seems to be of the dirt-polluted air that they daily breathe in our congested urban centres ? With what kind of food is its mind being daily, nay, hourly, fed ? Mental, quite as much a» • physical, rickets resulted if there was a deficiency in the essentials of nutrition, and there are diseases of mental darkness as debilitating both for the individual and for the race as the bodily, diseases of darkness which our physiologists and pathologists correctly trace to lack of sunshine, lack of pirre air, water and milk.”—Principal Grant Robertson, of Birmingham University. A Plea for the “Bud.”

“When I am trying to Judge the value of new compositions, those I like and understand I perform; those 1 dislike arxl understand I throw out; but those I dislike and yet don’t understand I keen in case I may learn bv further study to appreciate them. Occasionally it is necessary to perform a work out of the latter category, and then one wishes that audiences in this country would applaud only what they like and understand! It would be so beautiful to hear a whole audience hiss a work which one feels, oneself, to be pretentious nonsense. We are too polite for that, as vet. Communal hissing is inst as fine an ideal as Communal singing: it is just a different path to the same end—real appreciation.”—Sir Hamilton Harty, conductor of the Halle Orchestra, Manchester, in the London "Evening News.” Too Much Honk.

“There is undoubtedly too much, honking with horns, ana, I may aijd, too many open exhausts, especially among motor-cyclists. The noise near the main roads, particularly in the neighbourhood of towns, is certainly half of it unnecessary, and motorists should learn that the use of the horn is to warn occasionally and not to annoy, and, above all, they should remember that making a noise before reaching a corner does not justify a driver in rounding that corner at an excessive speed. Road sense and road manners take some time to acquire, but I see evidences of improvement everywhere I go, and though the accidents are many, and are deplored by all of us, a certain number are bound to occur as long as human nature is imperfect.”—Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. A Rest Cure for the World.