VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 196, 15 May 1926, Page 15

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

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

Unripened Grain. “If there is one thing more certain than another, ‘it is that the fruits of education are reaped only after the age, say, of 15 or 16. To take away a boy, except under the most urgent necessity, before he reaches the time when all that has been bestowed upon him begins to reach its harvest, is as if the farmer, in his hurry to get in the grain, should cut it while still grsen.’ ” —The Archbishop of York.

Wages and Leisure. “Many observers cannot understand why the workman seems to put his shorter working day above wages in his scale of values, and realising how closely the demand for leisure is linked with his memory of sti uggle and his sense of self-respect. Until this shorter working day is made secure there will be a general sense of uneasiness, a belief that this gain too is only held on sufferance and may at any moment be lost. So long as the workmen .regard this boon as a concession wrung from Governments when they were afraid of revolution, and liable to be withdrawn when Governments are more self-confi-dent, this suspicion will Ire a constant cause of industrial unrest.” —“Manchester Guardian.” The Eight-Hour Day.

“Here we have already, by custom chiefly, a universal working week of either forty-eight hours or less. But some other countries, our competitors, where trade unionism is either less strong or has different ideals, persist in working longer hours And this is one of the reasons, although by no means the only reason, why in some of our industries we are being beaten in the great struggle for existence which is eternally being waged, in peace as in war, between nations as between individuals.”—"Morning Post.” Isolationists and Ir/itationists.

We want to see Anglo-American relations on such a footing that these two nations may ultimately become the two greatest trustees of world peace-through the League of Nations. “We sympathise with the resentment, so widespread in th.. United States, that we should still be so bound—as at Geneva—to the cynical European lead of Jjrance. It may be wise and right for the United States to stand aloof until we establish- a better order in Europe. But this ideal will be hindered rather than helped if the ‘lsolationists’ of the United States are allowed to become ‘lrritationists’ too.”— “Westminster Gazette.”

The Religion of the Plain Man. “The plain man can bear witness to the Christian idealism of truth and honesty in his business. He can ‘play the game.’ A score of business traditions are before him, wavering in some degree between right and wrong. There are higher and lower, nobler and meaner courses, and he has some power of choosing which he will favour. It may mean on occasion a tremendous personal .conflict, involving his success, material welfare and comfort, and that of' those dependent upon him. Only he himself can quite measure the situation and determine his decision.”—“Liverpool Congregational Magazine.” Books—Onr Friends.

“Show me a house full of books, and you show me a house rich in friends. There is invitation in the brightly-coloured rows, security in the solid form of them, infinite comfort in the feel of the familiar covers. In the house full of books each corner holds romance, and adventure lurks behind every door. They never change, these little dun and blue and scarlet friends of ours—never intrude, never are far away when we call. They sit there so demure in their cloth and leather coats, waiting for us; each one for a mood, each one for a day, each one for a dream. Show me the house full of books and you- show me—a home.”—E. Roffe Thompson, in the “Ideal Home.”

A Man to be Saved. “The demand that the convict shall be regarded as a man to be saved and not merely as an offender to be made unhappy has been denounced as setatimentaii’ty. It is, however, dictated by realism—unless, that is, Christianity is an illusion. And, anyway, it is now a proved success. The Judge who still believes in long sentences, and in sending every possible prisoner to gaol, may or may not be inhuman, but it is now quite clear that he is a foolish person and an expensive anachronism.”—“The Church Times.” Understanding Death.

“To understand death we must know what life is. It was not a form of energy but a guiding, directing principle. It used energy and matter, but did not itself seem to belong to the physical frame of things at all. rt was like the influx of something from outside, as if we were tapping an infinite reservoir of life, which by proper arrangement could be brought to iiFsract with matter for a time and then, depart whence it came.”— Sir Oliver Lodge. Patriots or Pecksniffs

“Either we are patriots or we are Pecksniffs in this matter of buying British goods. How many housewives make it a condition of their purchases that thev must be British? How many men first look at the trade-mark before they buy? Do they, in fact, care? The truth is, all too many of them do not care a brass button. —The "Daily Graphic.” Treasure-finding.

“I am sure that good taste in books might be., more general than it is. I have noticed that children, by no means clever, who have had easy access to such books as the Bible, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, to Dickens, to Bunyan, Defoe, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and others that could easily be named, and have not been ordered to read them, but have been casually induced to find treasure there; who have heard read aloud some of the .greater passages of the best that man has done—such children, with a free run on all sorts of new volumes in later vears, show a native distaste for shoddv, and a ready detection of the insincere and pretentious.”—Mr. H. M.’ Tomlinson in the "Century Magazine.”

China’s Christian General. “One thing I am almost tired of reading and hearing about is what the political enemies of Marshal Feng have been saying. They do their utmost to discredit him by whatever means they can. They create all sorts of rumours, but we should be able to discriminate between the true and the false. So much is written and spoken about his Bolshevism, and he has been called the ‘Red’ General, but those of us who are with him every day and know him intimately and know what is going on here, do not know that Feng is ‘Red’ or that he has any special relation with Bolshevism. Ou the contrary, we know he, both by deeds and words, forbids and tries to stop Bolshevism and its propaganda. I can show definite documents and deeds to prove this statement.” —Rev. Marcus Ch’Eng, in the “Canadian Churchman.” Industrial Bureaucracies,

‘‘Whether we Ffie it or not, Capital and Labour in limes oi dispute are arrayed in opposite camps, and the decisions which have to be made will tend to become the decisions of the respective headquarters. Most of the employers’ organisations have long ago had that power reposed in their executive bodies, and' sooner or later the trade union movement will lie forced by the exigencies of circumstances to do the same. If the evolution of the movement continues in the direction in which it now appears to be travelling, and the large scale dispute becomes the rule, frequent consultation with the members by means of the referendum or the ballot vote during times of stress would be found impracticable, and would lead to irritating and disastrous delays.”—Air. Walter Citrine in the “Labour Magazine.” A Fine Record.

“The United Kingdom stands already far above all other countries which are its trade competitors in tve sum total which it provides for purposes of social relief and assistance. The cost of Poor Law, Workmen’s Compensation, Old Age Pensions, Health Insurance, and Unemployment Insurance, is 78s. 6d. per head of the total population, or more than twice what it is in Germany, and respectivclv six and twenty-five times what it is in France and Italy.”—“The Times."

Good Houses for Cough Mixture. “ ‘Even if elsewhere the rent was more we should save the difference in cough mixture.’ Now, this is just the sort of long-sighted view of housing and town planning affairs., that we have always advocated." ‘How ’am I to benefit,” asks the business man, ‘from all this expenditure on town planning which the Corporation contemplates?’ Well, the amount to be spent on town improvements will soon be saved in cough mixture, using the phrase generically to cover all those manifold remedies which are paid for out of the public purse to counteract the ills of living under bad conditions.”—The “Architects’ Journal.” Work, not Luck.

“It is a fatal philosophy of life to believe in luck, and to rely upon it to achieve success. Lasting and worthy success will always be, with few exceptions, the well-deserVed reward of ability, courage, grit, and Tiard work. The use of these qualities may not always achieve success, but they are essential qualifications of real success. And there never can be a genuine satisfaction in the enjoyment of success which comes without personal effort. Indeed, every successful man who has attained success by ability and energy will confess that it was the struggle rather than the achievement, which gave the joy.”—Right Hon. Philip Snowden, M.P., in the “Weekly Dispatch.”

Still the Housing Question. “To me it seems that the best endeavours of public men will be paralysed until the voice of the whole people of every class—and especially of the class which is not itself suffering from this intolerable evil—declares that the matter of bad housing conditions cannot be trifled with, and that, cost what it may to any group or class of fellowship, we must bring it to an end.”—The Archbishop . of Canterbury. Punishment and Reform.

“The modern prison is both a place of punishment and a place of reform. We have travelled far from the day when a prison was an entirely penal establishment. Just as a hospital is a place for repairing the sick body, so is the modern prison (except in the opinion of a few hard-boiled cranks) a place in which to ‘minister to a mind deceased.’ Most prisons, like most hospitals, contain individuals beyond hope of recovery to a normal, healthy life. Such individuals, in both cases, must be regarded as the exception rather than the rule. The prison worker of to-day goes to work with the belief that the prisoner in his charge has it in him to re-establish himself as a decent, law-abiding member of society. What we have to decide is the attitude .of- society to him.”—Mr. J. Hugh Jones in the “Daily News.” The "Best Seller.”

“The ‘best seller’ is probably the best example which can be quoted of sheer luck. It is seldom that the ‘best seller’ is a work of unusual literary ability. To be a writer of ‘best sellers’ is to enjoy a large income, but only an ephemereal popularity. How many people to-day ever heard of Tupper? And yet he, in his day, was the ‘best seller.’ Success depends in a large measure upon hitting the public taste. It may be luck which in some degree explains that fleeting kind of success. But in the main it is the instinct to feel the atmosphere. Indeed,. to put it another way, it is the capacity to come down to the intellectual level of the audience to which the appeal is made.”—Mr. Philip Snowden in the “Weekly Dispatch.”

The League’s “Growing Pains.” "No one need despair of the League because its machinery does not yet appear adequate to deal with such a problem as that of last week. The Leagtfe is very young as European history counts age, and it would be absurd to suppose that it will prove immune to ‘growing pains.’ ’’—"Yorkshire Post."