OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 30, 29 October 1932, Page 16

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Ye Olde Englisho Cricket Bat. “Growers of English cricket bat "willow made a great mistake twenty-live years ago and the wrong kind Of trees were planted. Consequently the great proportion of our bat willow to-day is useless. Science is ensuring that such a mistake can never happen again, and is arranging for only the finest bat willows to be grown. Only female trees are used for cricket bats. They have a smooth and close bark and are magnificently supple. All the male trees are rejected by the grower—when he knows them. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to tell a female cricket bat willow from the male —Dr. J. Burtt Davy, of Oxford.

Labour Party and Tariffs. “The Trades Union General Council s report on fiscal policy can have few parallels in the voluminous literature of the Labour movement. . It must be read again and again to discover what conclusions one is expected to draw. One might possibly imagine that the first draft was a Protectionist tract designed to show that trade unionists, because they ‘protect’ their labour against employers, must also protect their industries against foreigners; that in deference to the obstinate traditionalism of the Labour Free Traders someone was instructed to go over it and insert qualifications to every Protectionist assertion; and that to this neutral product someone else added a few tags and phrases to give it a Socialistic flavour. —“Manchester Guardian.”

Two Ways Out for Europe. “Europe and the world are once more at a turning point. The German claim is a final challenge to the Powers to say what they mean, or If they mean anything, by disarmament; and,when the Disarmament Conference resumes again the question will have to be settled once and for all,” says the “Week-End Review,” discussing Germany’s demand for either European disarmament or the power to arm herself. There are. of course, two ways—any only two—of answering the German demand: one is to let her build up her armaments, the other is to build down to meet her. If the former is chosen, the last pretence of disarmament will be gone, and an insane generation will have to start getting ready for the next war to end war. But fortunately there is, in the German note, nothing to prevent the statesmen of the Powers from choosing the latter alternative.”

A New Idea in Transport Reform. “The logical alternative to the recommendations of the Committee on Rail and Road Transport, whereby the user would pay the cost of road maintenance and interest on the capital value of the roads and no'more, would be the formation of a public roads authority similar in constitution to the .Port of London Authority, to purchase, maintain, control, signal, and light all the public roads in Great Britain, and to nay a per cent, per annum interest on its public roads stocV states the ‘'Railway Gazette.” “The construction and ‘ widening of roads would be one function of such an authority,, which would derive its income from tolls, which "would involve the restoration of toll gates. The petrol tax and cost of car licen-se would be reduced and become entirely revenue taxes. Thus, the road user would pay for his permanent way and signalling, and be placed in an equality with the providers of rail transport.” Can Human Nature Change?

“The discovery that human nature is not, as had for thousands of years been believed, something fixed and irremediable, may help to transform the world more profoundly than has been done by more marketable discoveries, writes Mr. Robert Brlffault in “Scribner’s Magazine.” “Faith in the- agelong myth of an immutable human nature, independent of social and. cultural conditions, has paralysed human effort. Human nature is no less capable of good than of evil. If it has at times appeared vile, that is because vileness has been thrust upon it by a social anarchy that has made Internecine strife its law and fostered the basest impulses. The Pall of that age-long pessimism is lifting A new faith in humanity is possible W know that the way to amend human nature is not to profess high senti Lents but to amend, the social and cultural -factors, that .mould and fashion it.” Broadening Out Life.

“The man who com plained-that there was ‘nothing to eat but food, nothing to wear but clothes.’ expressed very well the dead monotony of the average existence,” says Mr.-L. Stanley Fast, late 'Chief Librarian of Manchester. “And even for those fortunate people -whose environment or whose job-permits .of constant change, the possibilities are very limited, compared with ’the-variety; the richness, and the wonder <sf the world.- ; Fortunately this incredibly varied life of man —not of men, remember, but of man—is open to every one of us through the medium of the printed page. To complain of a narrow life when a library is yours for the reading is to- mistakein large measure the nature of life. What affects our physical senses is not experience. .. An experience is a something which takes "place in the man himself;-it may!be excited equally by an incident'or a person, or by looking at a picture, or by reading a book: these provide the raw material; it is what we do with this material after it has passed from the nerve centres into the brain, and been transmuted into emotion or thought or both,, that- con r stitues an experience.” Britain’s Health.

“It is sometimes said, though I think incorrectly, that in spite of the definite decline in death rates and the resulting prolongation of life, sickness, impairment, -and physical defect are as prevalent as ever, or even more prevalent. But of this there is no evidence available, and certainly such sickness (when it exists) is less mortal than formerly. We have no official certification of sickness which is not fatal — and It is difficult to see how we can have —except that of infectious disease and certain forms of industrial poisoning and accident. There are, of course, a large body of common knowledge and some hospital returns, but it is impracticable to assess general sickness with accuracy. All that can be said is that the English people do not behave like, and do not appear to be, a sickly or invalid people.”—Sir George Newman.

Representative Government.

“Representative Government was invented in the Middle Ages to secure the co-operation of a few scattered squires and farmers and bring them into relation with the central authority. It has become an instrument wielded bv vast masses of voters, more or less literate, in whose hands have been placed the keys which unlock our national destiny. You have thus a rapid industrial revolution and a vast pontical revolution colliding with an old Parliamentary system which is evolving with infinite caution. The minds of the citizens, the economic forces, the machinery of Government, are all moving. but at different rates of acceleration. Out of the resulting confusion, various proposals . for reform have emerged—Syndicalism, Guild Socialism, Devolution, are familiar post-war examples of attempts to combine economic and political freedom. Elsewhere a remedy has been sought in Dictatorship, where liberty is at a minimum and force and compulsion at a maximum. Mr. Thomas Jones, C.H., in the “Welsh Outlook.”

Breaking War’s Teeth. “As a sincere but, I hope, sane lover of peace, I want to make a protest on behalf of soldiers and sailors against the complete misunderstanding both or fighting and war mentality which is being exhibited by the highbrows at Geneva. Have they really so little imagination-so bad a memory? Is it possible they can really be so blind as to believe that when a nation is fighting for its life it will hesitate to use its ordinary civil aeroplanes for ‘bombardment from the air’? Would they'expect a drowning man who has clutched a straw to leave hold of it if you shouted at him through a megaphone, ‘That’s private property’ If our children want to fight they will fight, and fight with clubs and battle-axes n there’s nothing better to hand. The thing is to break the bad habit, not to try to legalise and regulate it. 1" ever we are to have peace in this world there is only one sane way in which at least to make a beginning—abolish conscription and you break the teeth of war.” —Sir lan Hamilton. The Hitler Meteorite.

“The National-Socialist Party of Herr Hitler, which hoped to gain a clear majority, and which has emerged by far the most numerous party in the State, has more than twice as many seats as it won at the election of 1930. But it is, nevertheless, a disappointed party; for the votes cast for it show only a very slight increase on those which it had gained in the numerous State elections of the last two years. It seems, indeed, to have reached its high-water mark, and its tremendous bid for triumph has failed when its members’ hopes were highest.”—“The Times” (London).

Understanding India. “There is a side to the Indian people which the British always neglect, and that is the psychology of the Indian mind. You have never tried to learn it, and I beg of you to reflect that the psychology' of 380,000,000. -people is worth learning by all those,who take an interest in world trade. - In this country you do, not realise that there are two Indias—one governed by the British and .the other by the Indian Princes. You have always : been taught, to look upon India as a whole —indescribable, mystic, and Oriental in its worst sense. You have neglected through no fault of your own the pride of the Indian States ruled by the Princes. Your mind is riveted on the great centres of India such as Bombay, Madras, and Karachi, and Task you to concentrate in the future more upon-the 80,000,000 people in the States’ governed by the Indian Princes.” —The Jam Sahib of Nawanagar—popularly known , as “Ranji,” the famous "cricketer.

The Right Spirit. “I would like to invoke the enterprising spirit of our. forefathers' and I would like to say thatiat'no. period of the world’s history have rewards been greater than they are to-day,” writes Sir Edwin Stockton in the “Merchant Adventurer.” “To be sure the unexplored territories’of " the world are virtually eliminated, but this by no means reduces opportunity, for the world is developing at a great rate. Better transport opens an ever-grow-ing field to trade and industry. There is another charge laid at the door of opportunity to-day, and that- is that great amalgamations and combines, great world ramifications of business interests under unified control,- offer small opportunity for the personal outlay of individualism. This charge will not bear scrutiny, for behind every enterprise, no matter how impersonal it may appear on the (Surface, lies a directing mind, a Leverhulme, a Ford or a Marconi.”

The German Demand. “Let there be no misunderstanding. J f Germany demanded something intolerable and demanded it with menace she would have to be resisted. But when a nation of 65,000,000 people, which can no more be kept down indefinitely by force than boiling water can be prevented from expanding, puts forward, in language of marked moderation, a demand for which. there is abundant moral, and even some legal, justification, then every statesman concerned with the creation of stability ip a chaotic world will set himself to think not how little his country need concede, but what is the utmost length it can go in the endeavour to meet Germany’s reasonable claims.”, —“The Spectator” (London).

Tariffs .and the Worker. “A rise in prices helps producers, ,and, as has been pointed out, in some form or other nearly every individual in this country is a producer. But it must be admitted that in a highly-complicated state of society such as ours this fact tends to be obscured. If every business was a one-man business, if every man was his own employer, he would appreciate soon enough the advantage of higher prices. But when he is one of a thousand men working in a factory, receiving a wage which seems very seldom to vary, taking no part in the selling of the article which he produces, not even knowing the price at which it is sold, knowing only the price which he has to pay for what he buys for himself and his family, he tends to look on himself entirely as a consumer. ‘ To him the only producer is his employer) ami he is apt to think that the result of Protection will be to put up prices to him, while the whole benefit will go into the employer’s pocket. If means can be devised to convince him that this is not so, miiph of his opposition to tariffs will disappear.”—Viscount Cranborne, M.P., in the “Quarterly lieview.”