VOICE of the NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 288, 31 August 1929, Page 19

VOICE of the NATIONS

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

Nationalism and War. “With all my heart I believe in Empire development. I think its achievement by the great nations of the world •would be the last step towards the establishment of a Of Nations aiming nt universal peace. Let us banish the thought that nationalism is the first cause oi War. We do not lessen the danger of war by breaking down the pride of race—pride in our great men, in our history, in our acts of heroism by land and sea.”—Sir Halt Caine ill a speech reported in the “Isle of Man Times?’ The Church Collection.

“The announcement of the collection brings a drop in the temperature. It sounds and seems an irrelevant intrusion of Seeula'rity into tile sanctities of worship; but that is quite wrong. We have drifted into the bad habit of thinking that ahy allusion to money in public worship requires apology; and so we do it timidly ahd shamefacedly. But all this springs from a misunderstanding about money. We are not ashamed to talk freely about money elsewhere; and' if appeals for money are distasteful to us in church, it is not because there is anything wrong with money, but because there is something wrong with ds.”—Dr. Richard Roberts in the ‘‘New Outlook.” The Way of the Reformer.

“It is quite proper to accept a compromise as an instalment. If we cannot get the whole, it may be quite right td accept the half. We may live to sectire the other half another time. We must, however, see what the acceptance of the half involves. It may be that if we accept it we shall be hindering instead of advancing.a genuine reform. We may be sidetracked. John Morley put this with great force when he said, .commenting On the French saying that small reforms are the worst' enemies Of .great reforms :— ‘There is a sense in'which the saying is profoundly ttue. A small aiid temporary improvement may really be the worst enemy of a great and permanent improvement, unless the first is made on the lines and id the difectiofi of the second. . . . The second - possible evil of a smhll reform may be equally mischievous—Where the small reform is represented as settling the question. . . It set’s men's minds In a posture of contentment which is not justified by the amount of what lias been done, and which makes it all the . harder to arouse to new effort when the inevitable time arrives? ”—Mr. James Scott, in "Chambers’ Journal.” The Soul of a City.

“I like tin architect to be a good host and his building to pay heed to neighbourliness; and lie is ill-advised to neglect these amenities. A vast building has just been erected near a little church, towering over it; but the little church still holds her oWn and her gigantic neighbour looks like a hyperpachic baby. The deserted village is sad, but the deserted suburb is gadder still—-those areas of endless streets infested with endless libhses, uillfofffi' Where uniformity is not wanted, diversified where systematic handling would have been helpful—alternately governed* by caprice or cupidity, though more more often the product of sheer untutored heedlessness;' such is the portrait of the vast, wilderness crowding round our great cities yet not forming part of the body politic, being detached from the full corporate life of their ancestress. That is why I call these suburbs ‘deserted.’ I have no objection to an artisan quarter aS such. On the contrary, zoning of occupation and residence has many merits. The tehdency is natural, for it is the outcome of instinctive aggregation. London nameplaces have cofiie to signify professions and callings—Harley Street, Fleet Street, Lombard Street, Temple, Whitef hall, Covent Garden, and so forth.”— Ldrd Crawford. The Vogue of Peter Pan.

“We'hear so much about the wonders of youth that it seems hard to suggest the real reason. But the real reason is that youth has been too much boomed. Our young people (and our middle-aged people, too) are nearly all of them Peter Pans. They are afraid of growing up. They want all the time to be irresponsible children,” . writes Mr. Frank Swinnertdn, the novelist, in the “Evening News” of London. “For this restlessness, from ■which twothirds of the world is how suffering in one form or another, is due to worn nerves, exhausted by noise, and an over-peppered diet of life, and there is only one cute for it. This cute is a campaign for the extermination of all oUf fake Peter Pahs. Fun, speed, noise, excitement, and pepper &ye all good things; but we have had too much of them, , What tile World how needs is less childishness and more . seiise; fewer ■hobbledehoys and more men and women. If dur Peter Pans would try to grow up a little we should have less restlessness find more real fun. We should also have a world fit for adults to live in.” Beauty and Art.

“If Epstein has taken his studies of these works so deeply into the body of his art that they cannot be identified,” writes “J. 8. in the “Manchester Guardian,” “it only increases the suspicion that there is something new as well as something alien to our habits of thought to his sculpture. Before we reject it with abuse we might perhaps take a little time to get used to it. We can’t be quite sure right off that he is not saying new things to us that we have to tune our ears to hear:

“Change is the pulse of life on earth; The artist dies, but art lives on; New rhapsodies are ripe for birth When every rhapsodist seems gone. So, to my day’s extremity May I, in patience infinite, Attend the beauty that must be, And, though it slay me. welcome it. “Yes, but. do we know that Epstein Is bringing new beauty to our'generation? Well, it seems to the present writer to be here ‘burning bright,’ although to many it is still ‘in the forests of the night’ ”

Mass Production and the Aesthetic. “The old village was not produced by any methods such as we associate with an architect's office,” said Mr. Morley Border in a recent speech. “It was an uncontrolled growth of craftsmanship interpreted with natural local materials. The conditions which produced this beauty have gone, and for this reason I enter a pled for their preservation. Mass production has taken the plftce of the old methods, and economic necessities require haste and rhe use of less sympathetic materials. But forms can still be controlled and standardised into beauty, but only by the most careful consideration of the massing and architectural connection of the units into less self-, conscious and assertive forms than are littering the countryside to-day.” Theory and Experiment.

“The great success of theoretical investigations in recent times naturally leads enterprising spirits to Use them not only In Interpreting what we know or Can verify by observation, but to lead us into regions where experiment is not available,. as a cheek,” said Lord Rayleigh at the close of his address as President of the Mathematical and Physical Science Section of the British Association at Cape Town. “I believe that this does nothing but good in times like ours, when there is no danger of the doctrines even of a master being undtiiy pressed, if the evidence of observed fact turns against them. At the same time, we must not expect too much of pure intellect unchecked by observation. Theories that do not stand the test of time pass for the most part into complete oblivion, and we are apt to forget hOW appallingly large a mass of wreckage the total of them represents. The next generation remember chiefly those that survive, and does not take full advantage of the lesson of how easy it is for an apparently inevitable conclusion to be wrong.”

The Bishops and the Prayer Book.

“The average citizen Sees in the decision Of the Bishops and Convocation, an unconstitutional step that is fraught with peril to the whole future of oUr Chutch. When firmness and patience were the first essential of united action, they have created a situation that practically legalises the restoration of those particular forms of medieval worship that were the main feature Of the Reformation attack, and of those add perversions which had encumbered the Primitive Faith in the Medieval Church. We are at the beginning of a struggle, of which ho man can foresee the end. The time has not come for the framing of a policy which will restore to the Church of England an administration in accord with its Reformation character and doctrinal position. We now register out determined opposition to a policy which is at once unconstitutional in its repudiation of the Enabling Act, and doctrinally in opposition to what our Church has taught and practised until Anglo-Catholicism raised the standard of Medievalism.”— The “Church Record.” The Chief Executive.

“In the discharge of the duties of the office of President of the United States, there is one rule of action more important than all others. It consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you. Like; many good rules, it is proven by. its exceptions. But it indicates a course that should’ be very strictly followed in order to prevent being so entirely devoted to trifling details that there will be little opportunity to give the necessary consideration to policies Of larger importance. Like some other rules, this one has an important corollary which must be carefully observed in order to secure success. It is not sufficient to entrust details to some one else. They must be entrusted to someone who is comnetent.” —Mr. Calvin Coolidge, ex-President, in the “American Magazine.”

Cruel Sports. ' “Along the lines of an all-enfolding kindliness, of good-will, in the cultivation of a universal sympathy, must we proceed if we would co-operate with the influences that are termed the factors of-Evolution. The hunting spirit is a link with the godless past, when man maimed and persecuted and slew where and how he chose,” writes Mr. Clifford W. Greatorex, in “Cruel Sports.” “We are here not to destroy, but to protect, to appreciate, and to learn more and yet more of the beauty and the wonder of all life. It is difficult to believe that any man or woman Who sets valtie by the Christian ideal can ever sanction the torture and the slaughter of beasts and birds in the name of Sport.” Economic Barriers.

“Are We quite sure that the present division of Europe into compartments called nations, each with high tariff walls, is permanent? On the contrary, it may well give way, and that earlier than many of us think, to freer and more natural conditions. The problem has very close connection with disarmament. If we can reduce armaments, we can reduce the tariff barriers between nations; for both are diseases of nationalism. During the war there were many who were so impressed by the obstinacy of the Ger'man resistance on their main line that they became defeatists. If they, fight so obstinately for a few miles in an ehemy country, what hope, they asked, even if we break the line, of our breaking an indefinite number of similar lines further back. But, in fact, the first definite break ended the war. Similarly, if the League of Nations solved the problem of disarmament, we might have such a revolution in our political ideals that the . barriers against economic union might fall down for the shouting. We must not, therefore, regard our present competitive tariffs as part of the eternal scheme of things. Nothing is so certain as that it will change some day, and we, of all people, have an interest in waiting expectantly and not committing ourselves to a principle which mav be on the verge of collapse.”— The “Saturday Review.”