OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 146, 17 March 1934, Page 20

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Hie Happy Ending. . ' “Is it sentimentality, this desire 101 a happy ending? I sometimes wonder if it is not rather the twin of that other instinct which blds us believe that though dust goes to dust, the spirit does return to the Spirit which created it We like our stories to end well because we hope that our own story will end well.”—Clemence Dane in the ‘ Yale t Review.”

Turning the Tables“Women are not necessarily displac- . Ing men as workers. It is a question of division of labour, of adjustment of the sexes to the work of the world. . Women may have taken some jobs from ’ men, but in the development of home industries into factory processes men ’ first took these jobs from women, and to-day machines are taking jobs from • I born.” —Miss Mary Anderson, Director of the British Women’s Bureau.

' To Secure Peace. Lord Snowden warns the British people that the peace of Europe at the present moment is in the greatest peril. ”' and this mainly because of the weakness of British policy and the mistakes of the British Government. lie is . overwhelmingly right when he declares . that no pettifogging concessions can • dispel the war cloud which broods over Europe to-day. His point of view here, has been consistently that of our leader column. To meet the danger .1 J firmer and more foresightful policy is f ' required. Large concessions are essentiiil. To effect them Would be possible j from behind the cover of an AngloFrench defensive alliance, supported by ' an adequate British Air Force. They •j would then be made with the con--1 fidence which such an alliance would inspire, and not as an act of fear. Were the whole question of German claims reviewed afresh in the right spirit, the peace of Europe might' be secured for a generation.—“ Daily Mail’’ j (London), ; . Youth and the Middle Age.

“The middle-aged are constancy decrying the younger generation,” writes Mr. William IL Rider in “Labour.” "In newspaper articles, on public platforms, and in the pulpit, we are denounced. But what right have our elders to be surprised that we are finding some difficulty in creating form out of the chaos for which they are responsible? Life for us is an uncharted sea. Age is no pilot to Utopia.' No wonder some of us get shipwrecked. :When a certain preacher recently referred to modern Youth as the ‘neurotic products of a Jazz Era,’ I wonder that he failed to follow his contention to its logical conclusion, and see that the ‘Jazz Era’ is again a product of the very Social System he was upholding! I know that there are many among our parents whose unselfish and patient service to Youth often meets only with derision and disrespect. But lam conscious on .the other hand that many who deride Youth, do so that their social system may not be proved a failure, and not from any sense of justice.”

To-day’s Opportunity. ■ “The religious keynote, the economic keynote, the scientific keynote of the new age musk be the overwhelming realisation that mankind now has such mental and spiritual powers and such control over nature, that -the doctrine of the struggle for existence is definitely outmoded and replaced by the higher law of co-operation,” writes Mr. Henry A. Wallace, President Roosevelt’s • Secretary for Agriculture, in the “Churchman.” “This spiritual. co-operation to which I refer depends for its strength mi a revival of deep religious feeling on the part of the individual in terms of the ■ intellectual > concept that the world is in'very truth one world, that human nature is such that all men can look on each other .as brothers, ;hat I he potentialities of nature and science are so far-reaching as to remove many of the ancient limitations. This concept which now seenis cloudy and vague to practical people must be more than the religious experience of the . literary mystic. It must grow side by side with a new social discipline. Never has there been such a glorious chance to develop this discipline as to-day.”

Britain and Disarmament. What has been done by our own Government, which by the mouth of Sir John Simon, on October 14, so strongly supported the view that German rearmament must not be permitted? All that has ever been asked of the British Government is a positive policy, consistently applied, and fought for as though it mattered. In fact,, we have had much more firmness, much more consistency, much more ingenuity on the negative side—in finding reasons why something should not be done —than ,on a ■ positive, policy. We put forward the Draft Convention of March ; we went much beyond it in the statement of October 14 (which we defended to the Conference); and, when the Germans flung out of the Conference and the League, we abandoned our October position', to the intense resentment of the French., and went back to —where? That.is more than any ordinary person can say. The just complaint against the Government is that its policy has been not only vacillating but at all times half-hearted. —"Manchester Guardian.”

An Atmosphere of .Insecurity, “There is ah atmosphere of insecurity throughout the world which weighs on us all. That atmosphere of Insecurity comes . from the- twenty million unemployed far more than from any other single causel The fear which unemployment spreads has deep and widespread roots—the £ear of losing a man’s place as a citizen, far. more, I believe, than the fear of privation. Because of the psychological effects of unemployment, States determine to keep their people at work even when that workcan demonstrably be done cheaper in other places and by other hands. Partly because the world is so large, partly'because the processes of industry and finance are so difficult to follow through and so impossible for Mie experts to explain .(in any fashion upon which they AvIH all'agree) the movement toward, smaller , self-con-tained units, against the world-unit or world-mgrket,' has recently spread very fast.- Indeed; the conscious defence of a self-contained isolation has begun, a philosophy which lias been called autarchy, or self-organisation with, as a unit, the autarchic state. It is because in Wiese smaller units a man feels more assured of his place -ns; a citizen.”—Mr. Walter Elliot in “The Endlees Adventure,” an address delivered ns Rector of Edinburgh.

Shipping Subsidies. “You can’t squeeze yourself into Heaven by defying natural laws. The policy of the subsidy is neither sound trading nor sound finance. The countries that are subsidising shipping, or any other industry, will soon realise how futile it is as a remedy for plungin'- enterprise. Neither a company nor a country can get out of a dirty mess by defying natural laws.” —Lord Runcimau.

Libraries in Schools. “The Board of Education should Insist upon the establishment of a library in every school in the country as part of its essential equipment, and should also recognise a properly-trained school librarian on the same footing as the teaching staff,” said Miss H. Smith, librarian at Leeds City Training College. “I find on inquiry that very few students have enjoyed the use of a library in school before they began their secondary education. I never cease to be astonished that schools are allowed to exist without libraries, considering that the essential thing—the magnet which drew scholars from the beginning' to homes of learning—was their possession of a good library.” East London Slums.

“I see no difference in the slums of ■East London to-day from what., they were forty-five years ago. There are a great many changes io.the good, Ihjre is a tremendous change in the dress of the people —silk stockings for the girls instead of ostrich feathers. I do. not find the same starvation. It took' me £2OO a year for milk and eggs in Bethnal Green to keep tlie sick alive, and, as I was toid in Poplar only yesterday, sd. for an adult and 2d. for a child is not much even now. We had to face absolute starvation in those da vs. But as I go down to Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. I see no real difference —a few well-meaning people, a few flats here and a few' flats there, but the problem is staring you in the face, the slums are practically the same as they were forty-five years ago.”—The Bishop of London. A Great Service.

“To know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may

escape. Than in effecting enlry for a light Supposed to be without.” "To come to the place where a man stands and to open a door for him. It is a great service: it is a greater service than to go out into the highways and byways and compel them to come in, or to 'pluck them as brands from the burning.’ It is perhaps the great est service that one. man may render to his kind. To open a door. to make an outlet at least possible, to widen the horizon, to reveal the vista, to breach the barrier, to unveil the bigger life—this is human service of tlie highest order. To open a- door itself is the great persuasion.”—From “The Common Room.”

A Joyous Occupation. “Across the pages of- a morning paper, darkened too much with storieof personal tragedy, of industrial hardship. and of in ternational-unrest, there leaps a sudden and delicious gleam of purest sunlight. In the,new London Directory,’ under the occupational in : dex, there' l appears the title: ‘Contractor for fetes and rejoicings.’.' Not ( all the wisdom nor the skill, of all mankind could produce a sweeter task- for .a lifetime.. Here' is. a. contractor strangely and deliriously unlike others:, they contract; for bridges, for little .stunted - villas,' for 'great office buildings, or for'funerals.: .but he for merriment and the jocund hours of innocent pleasure. He must be'clown, and harlequin, and poet, and generous host all in one. He pipes the tune to which lovers dance/ but he also - supplies the little Chinese lanterns to guide their mazed wanderings, and the sheltered arbours where they may sit and kiss the hours into swooning unreality.”—The “Evening News” (Lon.don). ’ i '■ ■ : ■

Goodwill and Brotherhood. “Much as there is .in the world at large, and in the smaller world of each one bf us,to trouble and perplex, and cause a searching of heart and conscience, it is good and; salutary to be reminded .'again 'anil again that there is neither ' practical ■ nor theoretical alternative to principles so fundamental as goodwill and brotherhood.” writes the Rev. Lawrence Redfern, of Liverpool, in the “Inquirer.” “Like truths of every .kind, they are often ill served, distorted and ignored. All the more reason therefore that Christmas, when' it comes, should be, duly observed. The commandment that men ishould love one another and live in peace together, once having been given, there can be no repealing it. So broad, deep, .and simple an injunction may at times be especially hard to obey, and fulfil.jß’it the present state of the world, which has tried every other method, is proof enough to head and heart alike of its immediate and irresistible validity. Men must live in peace and fellowship. or civilisation must go down into. the night.”. • .*....,

Australia and Secession, -■> - While the Premier of South Australia (Mr. Butler), for Instance, uses the secession flag to attract attention to the parlous condition of his State, or while the Premier of Western Australia (Mr. Collier) is busy in the preparation of an appeal to the British Government . for freedom from the “Federal yoke,” both would do well to examine the curve of the public indebtedness of their States and .to acquaint themselves more closely with the record that has played such a large part in putting their States where they are. The tariff of which Mr. Butler and Mr. Collier complain, be it good or ill. is the fruit of,the considered action of sturdy democrats from South Australia and from Western Australia: and these States played more than their proportionate part in placing the industrial laws of the Commonwealth upon the statute-book The history of Australia, financial and industrial, has reflected the feelings of her ’Parliaments, if not of her people. The role of injured innocence thus sits poorly' upon any State or its representatives. It is true that the depression is worldwide, but when it fell upon Australia it revealed a weakness in the'political structure that had become apparent, to observant people many years before. — ‘The Argus” (Melbourne).