OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 16

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Character in Letters. “A man’s character may be more surely deduced from the letters written to him than from the letters he writes himself,” writes Mr. J. C. Squire in the “Sunday Times.” “The- letters he writes himself may be artificial, may fail to reveal many sides of his nature .(because of modesty, reticence, fear, or shame), and, unless he be a very vain and self-centred person, will be adapted to their recipients’ natures or expectations. But the letters written to him show hita as other people saw him: they exhibit their feelings for him; they ask him for favours of the kind he is known to do; they tell him the sort of things that they know he will wish to hear.

“If 'Sir Walter Scott, for instance, had written a million letters we should not be able to gauge the full measure of the affection felt for him. ■But as 'we read these letters addressed to him we become acutely aware of the fact that there never was a more generous man or one more generally and deservedly loved.” Health Hostels.

“We need a new type of institution — distinct from hospital provision—namely, a health hostel. Examples flow from any physician’s experience,” said Lord Dawson, in his presidential address at the B.M.A. centenary celebrations. “Over-weight—the man of forty getting a fat body and a fat head, who avows himself a small eater yet is clogged with his own metabolic products; the man becoming set about the neck and waist, who turns his body slowly rather than his head and eyes quickly, or who is bluish and breathless, losing his rib movements and wants to ‘stay put.’ Then, again, the patient in the early diabetic stage, where not only himself but his wife needs instruction in food calories and cooking, and it may be in the administration of insulin.”

Mr. Churchill Makes a Point. “Let me give one striking instance which came to my notice when I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean,’ said Mr. Winston Churchill in 'the House of Commons recently. “We and America took under the Peace Treaty three great liners from Germany. The Germans surrendered them at a valuation and then borrowed money to build three very much better ones. They captured immediately the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, and they have it still. Now, the loans with which the Germans built these ships are subject to a moratorium, while we are unable to go on with our new Cunarder because of crar financial 'crisis. That is typical of what I mean when I say that Germany has not nearly so much reason to complain as some people suppose.’

De Valera’s Intransigeanee. “It is very doubtful,” says the Gias'gow Herald,” “whether the Irish Free State Government wants a settlement. Thev have been accused in the Dail ot being more anxious for a fight. The duties imposed to recoup the British Budget for the sums lost through Free ,■ State default will fall, as our Government anticipated, almost entirely on the Irish producer. The outlook for him is serious indeed, and the reprisals contemplated by Mr. De Valera will not improve it in the slightest. But they will sow the seeds of economic chaos. Ireland’s economy is to be an offering at the altar of the political prejudices and ambitions of Mr. De "Valera am the I.R.A.’’ Fear. “Clearly its most fruitful cause is fear. The man who instinctively dislikes all change is afraid of that which is new and strange. He is disturbed and irritated by the mere suggestion of any departure from established order, his established order. He refuses to launch out into the deep. He dislikes uncharted seas. He will hug the shore. And he is afraid not only of the unknown, but also of his fellowmen. Every week we read of negotiations which cannot succeed unless each of two sections concedes something. Invariably the way to success is blocked by people on either side who are afraid of the other. Every step in advance may give the other party an advantage. Therefore, it must be resisted. The die-hard is dominated by fear. And nothing more easily becomes habitual than fear. We may flatter it with the good name of caution, but the more we let it decide for us, the less shall we. be able to distinguish between ‘safety first’ as a wise man’s choice and as a coward’s refuge.”—Dr. David, Bishop of Liverpool. As a Man Beads. ‘“Tell me what a man reads and I will tell you who he is,’ belongs to that category of wise old sayings which are not so very wise, once they have been submitted to the acid test of experience,” writes Mr. Hendfik 'Van Loon in the “Saturday Review of Literature.” "For there have been a great many men and women who read sub- : limely but who lived vilely, and vice i versa. But ‘tell me how a man reads and I will tell you who he is’ comes much closer to the heart of the sub- > jebt. For books in and by themselves • are of secondary importance. But the > manner in which they are handled and ; treated and the role they play in the actual every-day life of their owner, these will give you a key to his char- ! • acter infinitely more reliable than a . mere enumeration of the classics, neo- • classics and miscellaneous which happen to be found on the shelves of his ■ library and many of which he may have inherited from his grandfather and may have been kept merely out of a sense of piety.” Science All-Powerful. “Nobody will deny that the tendency to-day,” said Mr. Entwistle, M.P., in the House of Commons, “is toward the, development of science and the improvement of machinery and to render less advantageous the natural advantages which those countries Which have hitherto been the main manufacturing countries have enjoyed. The cotton trade was first established in Lancashire because of the advantages of the climate. To-day, the humidifier in a mill almost does away with any advantage that may be attributable to climate. In fact, it is rather an advantage to rely on a humidifier than on the actual climate, because you have it under greater control and can regulate it and adapt it to the particular needs of your product. The tendency must be throughout the world for there to be no special advantages in any one given country in the production of manufactured goods, because machinery and science will counterbalance natural advantages and the human element to ; a great extent.

The Englishman’s Home. “We have a phrase—it is almost a proverb—‘that the Englishman’s home is his castle.’ I, for one, look forward to the day when we can say, ‘The Englishman’s house is his own home.’ That day is brought nearer with each week’s work. There is no reason why your own countrymen should not aim at making the same high claim. The English are not alone in their love of home, for that, happily, is a universal affection. We may go forward with confidence, believing in the ultimate success of our work and knowing that each new home that is personally owned adds something to the contentment of the citizen, to the betterment of tire community, and, ultimately, to the goodwill between home-owners ot all nations. The gift of home-owner-ship is the gift of pence.”—Sir Harold Bellman, at a Building Society Conference at Vienna. Roosevelt’s Hope.

“I am granted this opportunity to extend my deep appreciation to the electorate of this country, which has given me its great vote of confidence. It is a vote that had more than party .significance. It transcended party lines. It became a national expression of liberal thought. It means, I am sure, that the masses of the people of this nation firmly believe that there is growing an. actual possibility of an orderly recovery through a well-conceived and actively-directed plan of action. Such a plan has been presented to you, and vou have expressed approval of it. It is, my friends, most reassuring to me. It shows that there is in the nation an undoubted confidence in the future. This clear mandate shall not be forgotten. I pledge you this, and I invite vour help, the help of all of you, in the task of restoration.”—Mr. Franklin Roosevelt. Call for a Great Poem.

“Perhaps what this country needs is a great poem,” said President Hoover, speaking to Christopher Morley in a “Saturday Review of Literature” interview. “Something to lift people out of fear and selfishness,” added the President. “Every once in a while some one catches words out of the air and gives a nation an inspiration. You remember Kipling’s and that Poem of Markham’s suggested by Millet’s painting, ‘The Man with the Hoe.’ "We need something to raise our eyes beyond the immediate horizon. A great nation can’t go along just watching its feet. The kind of words I imagine needn’t be very complicated. I’d like to see something simple enough for a child to put his hand'on his chest and spout in school on Fridays. I keep looking for it, but I don’t see it. Sometimes a great poem can do more than legislation.” Machines and Men.

“I would like to give the House,” said Mr. Cocks, M.P., in the Commons, “one‘or two instances of what machinery does in the way of throwing people out of work. In many of our banks and counting-houses there are adding machines which are operated by one clerk, throwing about a dozen out of work. I saw the other day that in one place in London there had been instituted a machine which opened 500 let-’ ters a minute and did the work that formerly employed from 10 to 20 girls. In Milwaukee there is a machine which lays down 9000 motor-car frames a day and does this with the work of only 120 workers instead of thousands. An extraordinary statement was made the other day about agriculture in America. Through the introduction of tractors, the agriculture production had gone up 25 per cent, and no less than 3,000,000 people had left the soil. In a glass factory, by the institution of what is known as the Owens machine work which was formerly done by. 3000 people is now done by 400.” A Test of Self.

“If a man wants to know what his real religion is he should ask himself this question: ‘What are the things which I would die rather than do?’ ” said Dean Inge in a recent speech. “With many men the list, would consist mainly of things dishonourable rather than sinful; cruelty and base ingratitude would appear on almost every list. But whatever the unpardonable sin for us is—even if it is merely to act like a cad —if there are any things which we would die rather than do, we have acknowledged goodness as an absolute value.”

“Reproductive” Works. “A great deal is just now being said about the capacity of ‘reproductive’ works to stimulate employment,” says the “Morning Post.” “By reproductive works are meant capital undertakings which provide their own revenue and create no charge on the public funds. It would not be a question of ‘inventing’ works for the unemployed, but of advancing remunerative capital works which will, in any event, be undertaken as soon as industry revives, but which, for want of confidence or of immediate financial resources’, are at present being held back. In so far as such works absorbed capital which would otherwise lie idle, they might prevent the waste of accumulated resources, and the additional employment which result from the existence of idle capital. Their immediate effect would probably be, not so much to reduce actual unemployment, as to avoid its increase. If anything is to be achieved along these lines, the matter might be worth examining in the competent quarters.”

An Illusion. “There is a feature of the unemployment problem which received little attention in the debate. The rationalisation of industry is throwing vast numbers out of work,” writes Lord Snowden in the “Evening’Standard.” Mr. Lloyd George said the other day that before the slump the United States had no unemployed. It is time that illusion was destroyed. At the height of the boom there were double the number of unemployed in the United States we had in Great Britain. This was due to rationalisation. From 1917 to 1927 production increased there by 50 per cent, and the wage-earners added only three per cent, to their number, in spite of a large increase in the population. This is going on in Great Britain. It is a fact of tremendous importance to industry and the workers. Rationalisation is necessary if our competitive power is to be improved. The problem is to devise plans by which its advantages can be secured and the evils minimised or removed.”