VOICES of the NATION

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 62, 6 December 1930, Page 17

VOICES of the NATION

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

Mr. Hearst’s Advice to England. “In foreign policy I think England’s high ideal and inflexible purpose should be to secure for her great empire, freedom from war and from all the evils and burdens of war. England, being m the very vanguard of Christian civilisation, should make no alliances contemplating war, but only those which will ensure peace. 'The ancient fetish of a European balance of power Is not a principle to ensure peace, but to make war positive and imperative. "War, is made certain by a balance of power which leaves the issue uncertain and open to decision only by experiment. Peace is secured by an un-balance of power—a preponderance of power Which renders a nation or a combination safe from aggression. I believe a new. era of higher civilisation for all mankind will dawn when England and America cut loose from • the squalid cat-fights of Europe, and join hands to secure peace, progress, and prosperity throughout the world.’’—Mr. W; R. IJearst, in "Time and -Tide.’’ Curious Reversal of Position. “Modern Paris bears little resemblance to the ‘gay Paree’ of Victorian tradition. Any ilnsophlsticated foreigner paying, in 1930, his first visit to the City of Light, must have suffered, a shock in that naught was shocking. For this, to the outer eye at any rate, was hardly the brilliant city of his dreams. What struck him most forcibly was an air of severity and restraint. The Parisians, after all, were a people who took their pleasures rather sadly. We, on the other hand, have been clamouring for a brighter Loudon, find not only clamouring hilt even, taking steps to give actuality (to' our aspirations. The most unlikely places have gone, or are likely to go, discreetly gay. The Zoo, no longer consecrated to the country'cousin, has become an evening pleasure resort, a new Cremorne, where animals are less In evidence than coloured lamps and music.’’—"Tobias Trott,” in the "Illustrated Graphic.” Polite But Candid.

The information that British business mdn are mostly ignorant and proud of it while British schools are mostly hide-bound and out of touch has been conveyed, in the most courteous possible manner by ' the newly-issued Goodenough Interim Report on Modern ■'£ahW^' l^ w P<’ lite but " u « eDt phrases the Committee on Education for Salesmanship underlines the sharp contrast between what is thought adequate in the matter of linguistic Instruction at home and among some of our Continental competitors, and reminds us that under modern conditions we have to go to the world to sell, instead of the world coming to us to buy. ■ The idiotic predominance of FreX-h over all other modern languages put together which is still a feature of the British curriculum docs not escape'notice; figures quoted from the 1928 School Certificate show, that French candidates outnumbered Spanish by over seventy to one, and outnumbered German by 14 to oue. Feasant Versus Soviet. “In the light of all Russian peasant historv, in the light also of Bolshevist experiments at different gtages, in the present regime, we may with some conviction say that the Russian peasant masses do not lend themselves to the great experiment of socialist - economy which is being forced on them by the Bolshevists.' Given only a little liberty, the peasants of Russia have always, striven for the creation of firm, indi-‘ Vldualist husbandry, on the basis of proprietorship. But the Bolshevist Government will not and cannot allow them this liberty, this possibility for individualist development. Therefore, the fate of the Russian peasants is organically bound up with the whole social and political nature and fate of the Bolshevist regime.”—Mr. M. F. Gaufman in the "Fortnightly Review." Paderewski Speaks. “No poem or painting was ever created by a syndicate. Art is great only When it bears the Stamp of the indlvid- ' ual, and to-day the Individual is being merged and lost in the group. There are fewer poets and fewer musicians. We look- In vain for anything to duplicate what Italy gave us in the way of art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In music we still cling to the old masters. Where is there any one to-day who is reaching the heights of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or thoSe later Romanticists, Schumann and Chopin, or that youngest and most powerful genius, Wagner? I try to keep my mind open, but I cannot understand the meaning of most of the music that is being written to-day. On my programme, are the works of the modern composers — Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Scheeling—but the average composer of to-day seems to be seeking colour only, and colour is not music. When we pass beyond this age of comfort into an age of luxury, then there may be a renaissance of art. I do not predict this will happen, for I am no prophet. But art is luxury, and when people can afford luxury they usually look for artistic enjoyment.” • '

v Prayers for Kain.

“Prayer does hot affect the weather. One truth can; confidently be relied on as the issue of all reasonable thought about the world: we can expect results in a law-abiding universe only when we fulfil appropriate conditions for getting them. No imaginable conuectiou exists, that I at least can think of, between a man’s inward spiritual attitude and a rainstorm, nor can the former be conceived as a causative predecessor of the latter. Evidently this still needs to be said in this benighted and uncivilised country. The crude, obsolete supernaturalism which prays for rain Is a standing reproach to our religion and will be taken by many an intelligent mind as an excuse for saying, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be an, athiest.’ If belief in God is still made the basis of such primitive magic, how can observant people avoid the suspicion that faith in God is costing more than it is worth in the case of many believers.' —Dr. Fosdick, a well-known New York puwAbM. ">

A Gift of Sunshine. “The British Summer Time Act has been in operation for varying periods in every year since it was first introduced as a war-time measure in 1916, and at a moderate estimate it must now have transferred a total of 1000 sunny hours from the< sleeping life to the waking life of the average citizen in the southern counties.”—“The Observer.” ■ t _ • . t ■ : , • The Pioneers.

“The sudden loss of so many of our best must touch every feeling heart with the thought that these men died while advancing man’s mastery over the elements, increasing his knowledge, and breaking down his boundaries. The men of this race have ever been pioneers, content to spend themselves thus. ■ May a sense of the immortality of all high endeavour comfort those grieving for them.”—Mr. John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, in the “Daily Telegraph.”. Succinct Comments.

. "Protection cannot be turned into Free .Trade by waving a Union Jack over it.”—Mr. Edgar Wallace. “He who makes bad feeling at home or abroad is not only a destroyer of our prosperity to-day, but he will be the cause of far worse things to-mor-row.”—Mr. Owen D. Young. “The business fool in 1929 was he who had no fear. The fool, now Is he who has no hope.”—General Dawes. “Quotation marks, after all, are only air-minded commas.” — Mr. Herbert Shaw in the “Dally Express.” The Menace of Creeping Paralysis. “This nation has got to be mobilised and rallied for a tremendous effort, and who can do that except the Government of the day? If the effort is not made we may fairly soon come to some real crisis. Ido not fear that so much, for the reason'that this nation is always at its best in a crisis. This people knows how to handle a crisis; but what I fear much more than a sudden crisis is a long, slow crumbling through the years until we sink to the level of Spain —a’creeping paralysis beneath which the vigour and energy of this country will gradually succumb. That is a far more dangerous thing and more likely to happen unless some effort is made. —Sir Oswald Mosley, in the House of Commons.

Duty of German Citizenship. “The rise of a powerful Chauvinist party with ideals like those announced by Herr Hitler, would revive the mistrust of Germany that it took nearly a decade, after the war, to destroy. Such a revival would imperil the whole cause of European peace. But it can only be prevented by Germans. It is their business, their urgent business, to get rid of the conditions that have given the National Socialists their present position. Germany owes that to herself. She owes It not less to the Powers that, at Locarno and elsewhere, have gone in advance of public opinion in their own countries because they believed that German public opinion was genuinely anxious to liquidate the war.”—“Birmingham Post.” Victorian Man on Victorian Women. “Will you allow a Victorian man to say a .few words for our Victorian woman? I have just read this sentence in the article by Mrs. Hamilton, M.P., in the “Evening Standard.” “Meet her on her own ground and the modern woman is a far better person to make love with than ever was her shrinking, simpering predecessor,” writes Mr. Robert Blatchford, in a letter to that paper. “I was born in 1851 and I grew up and married in Victoria’s. reign. I was brought up by a widowed mother. I knew hundreds of girls and women. I worked for seven years among girls and women. I never met a shrinking, simpering Victorian woman or girl. I never saw a woman faint. The type of woman about whom so much pernicious nonsense is now written is ns real as the stage Irishman. She was a creature of the God-a-mercy novelist of ‘high life.’ If such a creature ever existed she faded out with the eighteenth century.” A Police University. ‘

“Since the War, co-operation between the various national police forces —particularly between the European—has steadily strengthened. Slowly, through exchange of views and agreement upon methods, there has been evolved an international machine for dealing with the detection and prevention of crime,”' writes Edwin T. Woodhall in the October “London Magazine.” “The British Police University, soon to be erected, wi 1 ’ be for the benefit of all forces of the country, as well as for the benefit of the civilised world. It is the answer of progressive plice investigation as against that of progressive criminality. Arrangements will be made in the very near future by the International Police Commission for an exchange of experts and lecturers, notably those of France, Austria, Germany, and New York.”

Glad That I Live To-day. “I am glad that I live to-day and not at any time'in the past. In the 4000 years before about 1800 A.D. civilisation had spread a gradually widening area, but its quality had not greatly improved. ■ A century ago in England children were hanged for theft, and the men of the ruling class habitually drank themselves under the table,” writes Mr. J. B. S. Haldane in the “Nation” of New York. “Neither of these evils existed in Ur of the Chaldees 4000 years earlier. In the last century we have doubled our average expectation of life, quadrupled our average real wage, and vastly improved our education and morals. This has been macle possible, in the main, by the application of science. We live in a dangerous age, but an extraordinary interesting one. History is being made on a vaster scale than ever before. For humanity as a whole I am hopeful. For England I am only moderately hopeful, though I believe that if we are willing to adapt ourselves to new conditions of life we may yet be as great a. nation a» »vw,”