VOICE of the NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 150, 24 March 1928, Page 15

VOICE of the NATIONS

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

The Rigour of the Game. To the scoffer, the high adventure by a Bournemouth golfer with a common or garden worm may seem a small matter. To the serious student of a royal and ancient game, it becomes of immense importance. This unfortunate gentleman, playing in a’ competition in which the absolute rules matter enormously, found a worm curled lovingly round his ball when he reached the green. After due consultation he removed the worm without disturbing the. ball. Inevitably the case had to go before the highest, .authorities _ for one of those epoch-making decisions which govern our path from tee to tee, from rough to bunker. And it was held that he had transgressed the letter of the law, and should be penalised one stroke. It is all very well in friendly ganies to remit by mutual consent those letters of the law, to wipe our balls on the green, to claim no forfeit if the wrong ball is played, or to ignore the \ tragedy, supposing a caddie were to interpose his nose between the ball and its objective. But when a serious match is in question, then the golfer rightly considers that he is not so much playing a game as engaging in an undertaking hallowed by tradition and encompassed by a complete judicial system. Thus does golf not oulv educate the temper, exercise the patience, and strengthen the soul of those who undertake its hazards, but provide us for ever and ever with interminable subjects of tedious conversation. —The “Morning Post.” The Public School Spirit.

The public schools have established a tradition of their own. They may have insisted upon uniformity at the cost of doing injustice to those exceptional boys who, while they have won little honour in their school lives, as they did not shine upon the commonplace lines of mental or physical prowess, yet in their afterdives have often become the most highly honoured members of their generation, if not of all generations, inthe school. They may have issued therefrom in a certain stable mediocrity. But in spite of all their faults and failings they have in a large measure created and disciplined the character of gentlemen. It has been sometimes critically observed that the Labour Party lacks what I have ventured to call the public school spirit. When the first Government of the Labour Pattv was formed, with Mr. Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister, two great public schools, and only two, Harrow and Winchester, were represented in his Cabinet. For the first_ time during many years of English history there was lio Etonian in the Cabinet, It happened when I referred in a speech to this exclusion of Eton from the Cabinet that a strong Etonian, who was. also, I think, a strong Conservative, wrote to me saying his was one of the highest honours which had ever been paid to Eton I could not pretend to agree with him, if only because I cherished the hope that the Cabinet Ministers who had been educated at Harrow and Winchester might not unnaturally breathe something of the public school spirit into the Labour Party.—Bishop Weldon in "The Contemporary Review.” Misleading Films.

There is a sad air of familiarity about the complaint from France that French people and French customs are misrepresented in the world’s kinema films. It. seems, to be the peculiar function of the films to give a false impression of national type's and characteristics—we are frequently told that dramas which pretend to deal with English life create the worst possible impression when they are shown to native audiences in India and elsewhere in the East, and if Americans behated as they are shown to behave in some of the Hollywood productions their land would be one large lunatic asylum. But it is not even certain that the films are the sole culprit in matters of this' kind Was there not a recent complaint that Irishmen were constantly travestied on the stage, and a 'society formed to put down all theatrical conceptions of the comic Irishman ? It would seem as though many of the simpler forms of drama cannot get along without slack types of character which may bear very little relation at all to reality. The new French complaint even asserts that international peace may be imperilled by films which persistently misrepresent the character of French people, and in view of the wide influence which the kinema exercises the point is not, perhaps, altogether fantastic, for it is a good deal easier to create the background for international misunderstanding than it is to engender an atmosphere of good-will.—The “Manchester Guardian.” Russia and Disarmament.

When Russia’s chief representative at Geneva formulated her plan of total disarmament he began by deriding the work of the League of Nations, directed towards solving the problem, and he blamed the “capitalist countries” both for the existence of armaments and the recurrence of war. When these things are balanced in the mind with the idealistic proposal now solemnly put forward, it is impossible not to suspect, and to suspect with conviction, that whatever be Russia’s real motive, it is not a genuine desire to promote peace by disarming mankind. Disarmament alone cannot end strife between either men or States. If a proposal for complete and imemdiate disarmament were made by a Power whose sincerity was beyond question, it would still demand from other States a cautious approach. But who to-day, after the repeated treacheries and betrayals of the past nine years, can avoid the conviction that this proposal is made with a view to using its almost inevitable rejection as a political factor to discredit other Governments with the more ignorant and emotional sections of their peoples? With a bland assumption that Russia’s sincerity is unquestioned, and that no practical difficulties bar the way, the friends and dupes of the Soviet in other countries .will flaunt the virtues of this proposal, and publicly infer the wicked and malevolent motives which prompted its rejection. That they may do so is, no doubt, the main object of the Soviet in making its theatrical “gesture.”—The “Yorkshire Post.”

Pleasure in Work. Fatigue is the inevitable result of work done against the grain. For this reason the State itself, in its proper anxiety for the welfare of its citizens, is concerned with tests of vocational fitness. For the sake of the individual and of the community alike, occupation and aptitude must correspond. Moteover, an occupation rightly chosen must be rightly pursued. Every form of manual labour,"be its form simple or complex, has its harmony with the natural rhythm of the body. Upon that harmony all the delight of work depends. Wisdom in choice and happiness in performance—these are the results which flow from the application of psychological science to the problems of industry. It is no slight thing that the importance of this new field of inquiry should become apparent just now. The industrial world is weary of strife. The directors of great businesses and the officers of great trade unions are making tentative approaches to one another, How can they fruitfully co-operate ? The old issues of hours and wages, crowded as they are with controversial memories, offer no tempting prospect. Happily a new field awaits exploration, a new method is ready to hand. It recognises the dignity of labour as a prime element in industrial efficiency. It thus affords a practical basis for' goodwill, and presents at once an ideal to be cherished and an opportunity to be grasped.—“ The Observer." Foretellers of the Future.

I remember some years ago meeting a Christian Scientist in Monte Carlo to whom, it had been vouchsafed that the Divine will as to the future was ciphered in stone at the base of the Great Pyramid. She informed me that the World War had there been accurately predicted, and advised me to go and see for myself. But I stayed in Monte Carlo. The Great Pyramid superstition is at this moment extremely rife in London. London, indeed, is quite full of it, and. all the Elect, being interpreters of the Pyramidjc rune, are agreed that another World War will be inaugurated in 1928.. I have heard circumstantial and apparently authentic details of a man —one of tlie Elect—who lately refused to buy a house in London because of his foreknowledge that next year Loudon will be laid in ruins, Other seers allot the birth, of the approaching conflict to France and Italy, Italy to be the attacker if not the conqueror. I have sometimes wondered why calen-dar-makers always put the year at the top of tHeir sheets. I now know why. Without that daily reminder even the clearest-headed of us might be excused for thinking that the current year was not 1927 but 927.—Arnold Bennett in “The World To-day.” London’s Motto.

. For Londoners to boast of their attachment to their city in these days of the week-end habit and the dormi-tory-suburb would have something ironical about it, if not positively cynical. But we must' not, perhaps, expect a motto to tell the truth: it should be enough for us if it bears an intelligible meaning. Nothing so suitable in English has yet emerged. What has been considered expressive has also seemed a little undignified, which is, unfortunately, the way of mottoes in modern English. There was once a successful business man who received a knighthood, and was asked what he would like for a motto. He replied: "The dreamer whose dreams came true,” which is reported to have made the entire College of Heralds feel a little faint. We must remember, however, that such mottoes as exist in English and have on them the respectable stamp of antiquity were formed out ot the vernacular of the period. Such terse and vigorous phrases as “Live but dreid,” “Live to live,” and “Be fast” were no doubt culled from the popular colloquilisms of a time which was not so anxiously conscious of its dignity as our time is.—The “livening Standard.”

Undergraduates and Motors. Undergraduates on this side of the Atlantic, who are still lamenting the orders of various Vice-Chancellors forbidding them to keep motor-cars, will be interested in the report of the principal of Princeton University, U.S.A., where a similar ban has been enforced during the past year. The result has been a decline in the number of students as compared with 1926, when more than one.third of the Princeton men sported their own cars, but. on the other hand, it is claimed '.hat there has been a much better attendance at classes, especially during the morning .sessions, far fewer breaches of college regulations, and a much higher percentage of successes in exams. Princeton authorities, indeed, congratulate themselves on the seeming fact that the prohibition has separated the sheep from the goats, and left them only those students who are inclined to serious work.—The “Glasgow Herald.” The Problems of Toryism. The Tories in the past have modified their creeds and their policy, but never in haste, and always obediently to a faith in what they deemed continuity, When they fought the American rebels, and lost a vast colony, they fought the American rebels because they believed, indeed they knew, that mere justice demanded that the North American colonies should take their share, in paying for the North American War. In the contest with Napoleon, which grew out of the American rebellion,, the Tories proved that they were ready to follow a great man anywhere, a trait which is in harmony with their instinctive character. Thus in the past we may watch them trusting to their crops, and supporting always with what zeal they might the interests of agriculture. As long as they could, they fought Cobden and Bright, who did not care how soon they destroyed the prosperity of the landlords and farmers, sq long as they could look upon the lives and comfort of the women and children, who continued to work in the factories, ns the material of English industry. 'To-day Toryism is faced with other problems. How shall it survive in a world of sordid ideals and dying traditions? How shall it preserve its constant loyalty or the continuity of a pleasant life?— “Blackwood’s Magazine."