VOICE of the NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 17

VOICE of the NATIONS

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

“The Rise of Gentile Christianity.” “We take it for granted that Christianity belongs to us Gentiles, though we know quite wed in theory that it began as a Jewish sect,” writes Principal H. Wheeler Robinson : n the “British Weekly.” “Even the study of the New Testament does not always awaken us to tile intensity and cost of the struggle through which Christianity liberated itself from the swaddlingbands of Judaism. It was therefore well worth while that this particular phase of the history of our faith should be described as clearly and fairly as it has been done by the author of this book. He has given its contents ns lectures both to Christians and to Jews, a fact which helps to guarantee the impartiality of the treatment. His own wide scholarship vouches for the accuracy and completeness of its historical detail.” Absurdly Easy. “Flying is really absurdly easy—and it is only those who fly themselves who realise this,” writes Lady Heath (Mrs. Eliott Lynn), the well-known airwoman, in “Air,” the new monthly devoted to aviation. “Just because, of necessity, aviation is ‘in the air,’ and aerodromes and machines in flight are away from towns and cities, there is a halo of mystery surrounding it. To the uninitiated ‘looping the loop’ is an achievement and an adventure, and the lay mind focuses itself on the moment of being upside down, while realIv looping is merely turning a corner, but doing it in a different direction from tlie corners we are always turning on the ground, and because of the centrifugal force that keeps you iu your seat—and your map lying on your knee—in a well-done loop you simply do not realise yon are going round till you touch the 'wake' of air you left behind you when you were going into the ‘corner.’ ”

Forces that have Gained. “The forces of assimilation have had some notable gains iu 19*27,” says the “Manchester Guardian.” “It is significant of our time, for instance, that sport should become increasingly a matter of record crowds, vast arenas, and high finance. The pleasure is turned into a passion and the playing field into an amphitheatre. The racing of greyhounds with a mechanical prey has ceased to be an ingenious amusement and has become an industry and a social problem. Not long ago lawn % tennis was a mild and private contribution to pleasant Saturday afternoons; now it is a great and profitable public spectacle, with the professional arriving and much rumour abroad as to the actual status of alleged amateurs. The world of entertainment becomes more and more homogeneous and authoritarian. The success of America in dictating to the world what it shall see upon the screens of picture houses has provoked legislative action iu our own country, and the State, whose traditional policy in regard to (be arts is to neglect them, is helping the national kinenia because it i> an industry with huge powers of mass suggestion. If it were a small and private tiling it would be left to look after itself.” Wanted—Less Smoke.

"I would like to see less smoke. Electricity and gas have already done much in private houses, but there* is more to bv. done. Factory smoke can be avoided by improved methods of combustion, ami by preliminary treatment of crude coal, extracting the valuable products, and burning only., the rest. If Sir John Cadman, Professor Bone, and a few other experts collaborated with Mr. Neville Chamberlain (as, for all I know, may be happening already) much could be accomplished. Now that people are beginning to realise the healthiness of unobstructed sunshine they will not much longer be willing to foul the air of towns.”—Sir Oliver Lodge, in the “Weekly Dispatch.” Goodwill on Both Sides.

“The men of goodwill,” says the London “Daily Telegraph,” on both sides are now to have another chance with their policy of industrial co-opera-tion, and no more promising sign is discernible in the economic heavens than the fact that the General Council of the Trades Union Congress and a group of powerful and public-spirited employers arc to meet shortly in the conviction that ‘the common interests which bind them are more powerful than the apparently divergent interests which seem to separate.’ That offers the brightest promise of the New Tear, and even if it issues in no general formal agreement, as signed and sealed between the two parties, we may reasonably expect that it will lead to farreaching agreements in many individual industries. The supreme task of 1928 is to clear up the post-war industrial battlefields and give British industry its chance.” Was Europe the Eden? “No branch of knowledge, however, is extending its range so rapidly as heredity, but another side which appeals to me enormously is the history of man and liow he came to reach his present position. In the current issue of ‘Nature,’ for example, is. reported one of the biggest discoveries of its kind ever made in Europe concerning human origin. A German geologist, who lias for some years been collecting fossils at a certain site near Heidelberg, and whose efforts had already yielded the Heidelberg jaw, a relic of about the earliest human European wc know, lias not only found further parts of that man, but also two great anthropoid apes—otic of a very human type. There thus really seems a chance that Germany is going to produce the ‘missing link,’ and it begins to look very much, after all, as though Europe was' the ‘Garden of Eden.’ ’’—Sir Arthur Keith, in the “Sunday Tinies.” When Nature Intervenes. “All inventions become impotent when nature chooses. Jhe steampacket cannot get out of harbour, the railway train is as helpless in a snowdrift as the stage coach, the motor-car skids into the frozen ditch, the telephones arc dumb with broken wires, the aeroplanes cannot see their way. Wayfarers die of weariness and cold; houses, villages, towns, go short of | food. Wc have to dig ourselves out, wc must manage- our affairs by manpower and pack-horse, as they did a thousand years ako. —“Daily Telegraph.”

What is Common Sense? “Common Sense is like common law: that sense ‘whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.’ It has its basis in custom, in the faith of tradition, and the good judgment of tb.e common people. It holds no implication of ignorance, but rather or breadth of view, unprejudiced by too much feeling. It is the instinctive judgment of the few who have more than the average intelligence. Its inti insie worth lies in both its origin and its application to the affairs of men—without both of which it would be valueless. Common Sense is that mental poise or balance which enables us to view a fact or a situation in a practical way, cleared of the fogs of theory, sentiment, or emotion. Imagination may lift our hearts to the clouds, but Common Sense keeps our feet firmly on the giound. Common Sense —that all-desirable ability to detect values, to know the big things from the little ones.* Common Sense —a heterogenerous mass of borrowed opinions applied at haphazard in framing a conclusion by a mental Jack-of-all-trades, who scorns the ordered structure built by toiling intelligence from the materials of patient research.”— “The Forum.” A Marvellous Story.

“The story of a hundred years of electrical engineering thus imperfectly outlined is indeed mi astonishing tale. The work of the electrical engineer lias been to annihilate space and time, to tap fresh and immense sources of power, and to neutralise the results of the concentration of population in great cities, and to meet the demands for more light, transport, and news. His benefactions to humanity have been immeasureable in value. No general strike on the very largest scale could inflict a tithe of the damage which would result if the work of the electrical engineer during the last century were withdrawn or undone. The electric current is now our potent and obedient servant, and though its employment, like that of all the great energies of Nature, is fraught with danger, vet by a scientific study of its laws we have been able to control its use for the benefit and convenience of mankind.”—Professor J. A. Heining. The Art of Toleration.

“Toleration is the. art of helping oneself with a liberal spoon to the gifts of the spirit. It is a policy, not of exclusions, but of preferences; not of indifference, but of a keen sense of our common liability to error. The best kind of toleration is rooted in wide historical knowledge. It seeks analogies rather than contrasts. It realises that the historic values of a nation are not based on negatives, but on efforts and sacrifices for ideal ends. It stands in the‘sharpest opposition to any kind of pedantry ; in practical affairs it woulff rather risk a little on the score of intellectual consistency and pride than forfeit an opportunity of shaking hands with an opponent; it sees things in perspective; realises that the planet itself will not endure for ever, and that the life of man is altogether too short to be consumed in getting on his fellow’s nerves. Its social print is a finished courtcsv. It is no part of toleration to vociferate every moment from the housetops the inevitability of our own intellectual righteousness. I have often thought that this pleasant, but difficult, virtue would be assisted in its uphill fight if, from time to time, some good fairy were to descend upon us, and, with a touch of her wand, transmute for one hour in the twentyfour our prejudices, foibles, and creeds into those of our sharpest opponents. The political atmosphere of Parliament and of university would be sweetened bv such a cleansing process.”—Right lion. H. A. D. Fisher. Wliat Statesmen do not Know.

“Is it possible to expand the world’s demand so that we can sell. all the coal wc produce without closing any mines, so that those in the . cotton trade can keep all their plant in operation, and so that the same thing can apply to steel and other industries? After the most careful investigation,” said Sir George Paisli in a speech recorded in the “Manchester Guardian, “I have come to a definite conclusion that it is possible. There is no reason that I can see wliv our trade should be as slack as it 'is. Or only one—that is, the inability of the statesmen of the world, and of our own country, to understand this world machine of production and distribution. That is the cause. It is psychological; it is mental; it is due to inefficiency in high quarters. It is not due to inefficiency in the cotton trade or the coal trade. It is due to the inefficiency of statesmanship. and we have got to face the fact. Tile statesmen of the world naie. not been supposed to know anything about world economics in the past, ana we have not chosen statesmen who had that knowledge.” Wanted—a New Philosophy.

“A new philosophy, it is suggested, is necessary to a new world,” says Professor Atkinson Lee. “It is not yet clear whether the present obscurity is the dawn of a faiter civilisation or the dusk before a new age of darkness. But in ay case the collapse of the competitive ' individualistic philosophy o, the 19th centurv, during the Great . War, makes botli necessary and possible a better philosophy of society to-day. It thus seems feasible to gather together some of the researches of the last quarter of a century, and to present them as the groundwork of a new social construction The present essay is a contribution to that cud. . . • T. is discursive, it moves restlessly from point to point; duty-doing is dynamical, it pursues an end beyond the present. The enjovment of beauty is ininianental; though active enough, it is activity in repose. Even the production of beauty, though the very type of creativenesa, s seif-satisfying. The Sense of Security.

“The truth is that the sense of security must be of slow growth. It is a matter of accustoming nations to settle their differences by peaceful means, especially under the' voluntarily accepted compulsion of arbitration treaties The process cannot be spectacular.”—“Manchester Guardian.”