VOICES of the NATION

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 221, 14 June 1930, Page 19

VOICES of the NATION

z SAYINGS 'AND WRITINGS :: OF THE TIMES :: ::

For Christianity’s Sake. “Let the Lambeth Conference declare that waj ft utterly and entirely wrong, says Dean Sheppard of Canterbury, in bis book, “Hopes and Fears for the Church.” “I yield to none in my admiration and respect for those who in recent years laid down their lives in war. I look upon many of them with the same honour with which I regard martyrs, but I believe that they died to end war. lam now clear, without any shadow of doubt, that It is idle for any professing Christian to pretend that under certain circumstances he could obtain His Master’s sanction for the killing of his brother. Cannot the Lambeth Conference declare what is, after all, the mind of most thinking people to-day—that Christianity and war are not compatible? Should another war break out, I should wish to see the disciples of. Christ dying unarmed on the frontier, rather than engaged in killing their brothers. And if the Church lose caste, credit and everything it posseses as a result, well, in so far as there would come to it an access of Chrlstlikeness, I should know it would be of service to the world.” Cooperators and Politics.

“Co-operative citizens have a right to obtain legislation from Parliament to permit the growth of their trading system as capitalists have. Being in the majority, they have denied us this right. Our job is to take it. What we cannot get' by consent we must win by power. Societies that have stood aside from political action must now make up their minds. The place of any self-respecting co-operative society should be in the fighting line against the policy of boycott of co-operation, be it in trade or in politics. The Cooperative Party, if it wills, can thrill the whole movement with a new purpose. Our reply to our political opponents must be to put more Co-opera-tive M.P.S on the floor of the House of Commons. We have the men, we have the money, we have the organisation, a Press, and the potential votes of six million organised consumers behind us. No new political force has been better equipped than the Co-operative Party to become a power in politics. All we need is the courage, the will, and the imagination to use it.” —Mr. Alfred Barnes, M.P., in his presidential address at the recent Co-operative Congress. The Root of AU Evil.

“It remains imperlshably true that the hoarding and avaricious spirit is the root of all evil. There is only one remedy—confidence in ourselves and in others. At times like the present every man should trust his neighbour to the utmost of his ability. For trust, and not gold, is the basis of credit, or, rather, is credit itself, and credit is the lubricator of industry without which the whole system gets clogged aud poisoned. The Bank of England has done well to lower its rate for the benefit of industry Without waiting for every danger to disappear from the horizon. We should all do likewise by looking to live character and not dead 'security’ as the test of business worth. No man and no society was ever saved by mere cleverness; and our industrial society will be saved not by economic devices but by the proper use of them; not by the hard head but by the head’s obedience to the heart.”—“Manchester Guardian.” A Poet on Poetry.

“The value of poetry is that it is a means of increasing the real values of life itself,” writes Mr. Alfred Noyes, the poet, in the “Sunday Express.” “Most people at the present day are sleep-walkers. They are alive, but they are not really awake, and they do not realise their own miraculous possessions, or really perceive the world around them. We have only to think of what would happen to our minds if (through some climatic change) the trees were to break into leaf only once in a generation, and flowers to appear on earth only once in a quarter of a century. The beauty of that appearance would be almost overwhelming. We should walk in wonder and awe through our fields and woods, and an apple-bough in blossom would seem to us, then, the miracle that it really is. It is in this quickening of the senses, not to airy nothings (Shakespeare gave that phrase to a representative of statecraft, not to a citizen of the heavenly city), that poetry has its great part to play in our modern life. It quickens us to miraculous realities. To enter into the kingdom of great poetry is to enter into the real world, the intelligible world, a world that is far more solid and sure than that which surrounds most people.” LIMP. Aspirations.

“For the I.L.P. the most important event Of the past few days has been the Annual Conference at Birmingham, at which the leadership of James Maxton has been upheld beyond the shadow of a doubt. Of the decisions the most vital was that aiming at the reconstruction of the I.L.P. Parliamentary Group on the basis of the policy of the I.L.P. as laid down by Annual Conference, and as interpreted by the National Council. Although this decision cannot have full effect until after the next General Election, it is an important development. This reconstruction is the logical outcome of the events of the past ten months M Labour government. The crystallisation of the general line of criticism taken by the rebel M.P.’s and the endorsement of their policy made some change inevitable.” —“The New Leader,” the organ of the I.L.P. Cause and Effect.

“The Independent Labour Party vindicated the first word of its title at its Easter Conference. It sided with Mr. Maxton. scolded the Government for its tolerance of. and help to, capitalist industry, and demanded ‘Socialism in our time.’ There was great enthusiasm, but of the two hundred or so Members of Parliament who still belong nominally to the I.L.P. only nineteen troubled to put in an appearance.” —“The Observer” (London),

Our Double Lives. “Within the four walls of his own house a man may live a strictly ethical life; but the moment he crosses his doorstep he becomes entangled in a bewildering maze of relationships—with the postman who brings his letters, with the urchin who delivers his milk, with the scavenger who sweeps his street —relationships in which the first principles of social justice may have been violated, but which he is powerless to control. Throughout the remainder of the day he may be faced with the same perplexities,” writes Mr. Alexander Mackendrick, in the “Hibbert Journal.” Choosing a National Poet.

“It should be possible to find a poet,” says the “Manchester Guardian,” “who enjoys the respect of other poets and at the same time has shown that he is not sb far aloof from other men as to be unmoved by public events that would. stir them to song if they could sing.' Such a poet might, without the slightest violence to his Muse or his convictions, enhance in the whole nation its consciousness of poetry’s office. Supposing such considerations weigh at all with Mr. MacDonald when in choosing a poet to recommend for this post he performs one of the most Interesting duties of his term of office, they will make the task of choice easier than it would at first sight seem by narrowing the field. They perhaps rule out cne of the greatest poets of our time, Mr. W. B. Yeats, on the ground that in so far as his Muse has national sympathies they are specifically Irish. Here, of course, the question arises whether the Poet Laureate is to be Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom or of the Empire, parts of which are so different from other parts that they may well feel the need of a Poet Laureate of their own.” These War Books.

“With a few honourable exceptions,” says the “Daily Mail,” “such as Mr. Tomlinson's 'All Our Yesterdays,’ and Mr. Blaber’s ‘Medal Without Bar,’ the war novels that have been recently so popular have revealed petty minds in Ignoble moods. With scurrilous Illtemper they have searched out every unsavoury corner of the war scene, magnified It, enhanced its unhealthy colours, and presented it to the postwar generation as typical of the whole. A young man or woman dependent for knowledge of war-time England upon these books might grow up under the impression that the officers and men of ten years ago were cowards, drunkards, bullies and libertines. The writers would not have dared to publish these falsehoods ten years ago, when they would have had to deal mainly with readers who knew the truth. To-day they have access to the minds of a younger generation, who know the war only at second hand.” A Fact Of India.

“There is probably not more than one medical practitioner to 50,000 people in the rural areas. Besides the scarcity of doctors, there is a terrible prevalence of disease,” writes Dr. B. Chone Oliver, of Poona, in “Conquest by Healing." “A missionary who has worked for years in rural areas said that he thought very few people were really well. The vast majority of people are underfed. The infant death rate is appalling. For all India it is 174 per 1,000. For Bombay, 359 per 1,000. For Calcutta, 326 per 1,000. For Cawnpore, 420 per 1,000. Malaria and other fevers caused over 50,000,000 deaths in a decade. There were over 7,000,000 from influenza in 1918. Leprosy probably affects nearly 1,000,000 people. Hook worm incidence is 80 per cent, in some places. The round worm is very common. and on investigation was found in 05 per cent, of High School boys in certain places. Typhoid fever is very common, tuberculosis is on the increase.” The New International Habit.

“The habit of mutual agreement has received one more successful precedent. Naval limitation is a continuous process. We regard disarmament as a goal to be reached by successive steps, by frequent revision, and improvement. By our present agreement the favourable attitude of the world is made stronger than ever. The benefit of this momentum will not be limited to the three Powers who have actually reached a basis of mutual agreement, but will extend also to help the efforts of our friends, the French and the Italians, to achieve that goal in the future. Limitation to be effective must be made willingly and with confidence. We have every hope that France and Italy will eventually join In a limitation of their fleets similar to that which we have attained, but that is a result which, to be effective, must come only when each country fully realises the advantages which will follow.”—Mr, Stimson, head of the U.S.A, delegation to the Disarmament Conference. An Appeal for the Children. “I appeal to the Prime Minister: ‘You who have always cared so greatly for the peace and happiness of humam Jty, will you not help the boys and girls of your own country to a security of this same peace and happiness, for you cannot translate your own golden dreams for the future into the tapestry of life unless these boys and girls help you to weave them there. I came to bring Life and that more abundantly.’ The cry of a great Teacher rings down the ages and finds an echo in the heart of every teacher to-day. Life and the fullness of Individual life —power and the perfection of individual power! The great revolution goes on. Scientific change, economic change, philosophic change, change in every department Of life and thought. We cal)' to the Government: ‘Accept the challenge, rise to the height of your opportunity, put into the hands of the rising generation the levers which shall guide and control change, turning ever the new forces into paths of purposeful constructive service, enriching them with the heritage of a great past, endowing them with power to build for this country and for mankind a future based on justice, equity and truth.’”— Mrs. Manning, President of the British i National Union of Teachers.