OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 122, 16 February 1935, Page 20

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Machine Slaves. “We hear to-day,” said the Duke or York, in a recent speech, “that man is becoming the slave of the machine, but looking at figures we find that only about 12 per cent, of the population of Great Britain work in factories. Of these, no more than half are directly tending machines. Thus out of some 45,000,000 only 2,500,000 can be termed ‘slaves of the machine.* But I wonder if the problems so often attributed to the machine —of dullness and monotony, of insecurity and fear, of a sense of aimless endeavour —are not present just as much among the great army of manual workers or among shop assistants or clerks.”

Thinking As a Task. “Thinking is only one aspect of mental activity, and mental activity is only one aspect of vital activity. Life must go farther than mere thinking can carry it. It cannot stop where thinking stops. Then what is to be the guide of life when thinking falls to be h sufficient guide? Is there to be no guide at all? A negative answer is too often given, and hence the confusions of the hour. But there is no justification in thought or anywhere else for the negative answer. Thinking stops very often before It needs to stop. It ought to proceed as far as it can, and when it does so it sees the reasonableness of seeking help beyond itself.”— Professor Daniel Lamont, D.D., in his book, “Christ and the World of Thought”

Man, Know Thyself. “Never was it more vitally important than in these harassed and chaotic years that a man should know himself. This is why mere reading is not enough, and why the idle reader of an idle day tends to be more and more a misfit. The authentic thoughts and ideas of men and women, the emotions, aspirations, and ideals that are not spurious, do not find their expression in any sort of literature, but only in literature of high quality. And just as the majority of us have become very particular —nay, rigidly so— : about what we take in as physical organisms, so the time must be near for absolute care as to what shall be our intellectual sustenance. Any organised effort that will enable people to choose good books and to read good books, not simply more books, is in keeping with the real spirit of the age.”—“Liverpool Post.” “The Hidden Alchemy.” “If we close our eyes for a moment to shut out the bewildering dance of the world of time and events, and if we reflect in quiet on the inward essence of Democracy, perhaps we shall detect, in the metaphor or ‘myth’ of the waters and th© wheel, the nature of that essence. So reflecting, and thus detecting, we shall be grateful to those who gave us, a hundred years "ago, their contribution to the establishment of this essence In our life. We shall not forget (we should be foolishly idealistic If we did) that they laboured immediately for their own profit. It paid to collect and clarify and canalise opinion. But as we said in the beginning, so we may also say at the end — kingdoms may grow, and be established, upon rude and material beginnings. That is the way of the hidden alchemy, which shapes our ends beyond our own intentions.”—Dr. Ernest Barker, Professor of Political Science, Cambridge University, in the “Times.” Law and Order in India. “We have always respected the hesitations over placing law and order in India in the hands of Provincial selfgovernment. They are aS real and as honourable as those of every mother when her child first goes out to play his own part in a wicked world. But unless that responsibility is conferred on the Provinces, the constitution that the Conservative minority would give them can only be an incentive to irresponsibility. It would stimulate that instinct of destructive criticism which is already too rife In India, and fatally obstruct the sense of partnership that is the essence of a free community. And, just as every Provincial politician would be tempted to see fair game in a police force in whose control he had no share, so the Provincial Governments, as a whole, would find irresistible zest in the badgering of an unrepresentatlve centre. Either of these limit atlons must submerge India’s adolescence in faction and sterility.” "The Observer,” Loindon. How Time Flies! “.Simple people will go on saying to end of time: ’How time flies!’ And especially will they go on saying it in the month of December, when another year is drawing .to its close, writes Mr. Ernest H. Jeffs in the “Congregational Monthly.” "My notion is this: if any job is worth doing in this world, it is worth doing as if one had all eternity to do it. I should hate to give up some interest or some hobby, not because I am tired of it, but because of the thought that ‘my time is limited’ and I ought to play a little a. some other game before I die. Give me the man who is so keen about stamp collecting (for example) that he collects until his ninetieth birthday, and dies in the childlike faith that somewhere, in the next life, he will be made happy with a Blue Mauritius. And so I am cheered by those obituary notices which suggest that men have gone on with their jobs, or followed their enthusiasms and their interests, without being worried by the thought: How time flies'.’” “Winston.”

“Mr. Churchill’s speech as a performance was easily the finest of the India debate in oratorical abundance and verbal dexterity. But is was devoid of constructive thought, and chiefly anlmated by prophesyings of evil which it can only help to fulfil. As we all know, Mr. Churchill in polities can be quite as brillant when he is wrong as when he is right. He is never more ardent in his devotion to a fixed idea than when circumstances have made it obsolete. There are times like the present when his imagination can give prismatic play to all the rhetorical elements, but In a way that leaves no room for uncoloured reflection Charged with unconscious irony, the speech was the suicide of paradox. ‘I must warn the said Mr Churchill, ‘that they will never nt' able, to reach agreement with the Socialist Opposition.’ After the warning, it was Mr. Churchill who found himself in the same lobby with the Socialists.” —Mr. j, L. Garvin, in the “Observer."

The Distributive Trades. “Out of a net increase in insured employment of 939,000 persons during the past eleven years no fewer than 650,000 are accounted for by the distribu-' tlve trades alone, while those engaged in mining fell by 560,000 and those engaged in manufacturing increased by only, about 200,000. It is, no doubt, true that, owing to improvements in technical efficiency, the volume of output in the manufacturing industries, has increased faster than employment.; Moreover, the increase in the number of insured persons engaged in distribution may perhaps be partially explained by the encroachments of the big store on the small shopkeeper. But when every allowance is made for both these factors It still remains that there is a disproportionate growth in the, national outlay on distribution as compared with that oh production.”— “Manchester Guardian.”

Lest We Forget. “"We Scandinavian peoples are in several respects more favourably situated than most nations in relation to the problem of peace and war. We have succeeded in eliminating war among ourselves for the last century and more. Indeed, Norway and Sweden are, if I am not mistaken, the only nations in the world that have not known war for the last hundred and twenty years,” writes Christian Lous Lange, in the “American-Scandinavian Review.” “This has created a tradition in our ways of thinking and in our policies which is one of our most precious national heritages. In my judgment it is this tradition that best explains why Norway and Sweden could separate peacefully in 1905. It was this that gave Sweden moral strength to accept without hesitation the award of the League Council in the Aland question in 1921, and made it a matter of course that Norway last year bowed to the decision of the World Court in the East Greenland dispute with Denmark.” Counting .Our Blessings. “When I used to work many years ago in a poor part of Liverpool, there was an evangelical hymn which the children were fond of shouting which had the refrain: “ ‘Count your'blessings, count them one by one, AWI it will surprise you what the Lord has done.’ “This is an excellent maxim if we substitute ‘board’ for the ‘Lord.’ I want to try to admit all the blessings that the board have conceded. . . The right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir. A. Chamberlain) thrilled the Hquse not long ago with a speech when he said that when he looked at the slums in his own area he asked himself, ‘ls this all we can do for them? I sometimes wonder why they should vote for me and mine.’ I think great numbers of people will be asking that question about their own representatives, and if they find that the particular gods of their own political heaven turn a deaf ear or are impotent to help them, I should not be surprised if they turned to strange gods.”—Mr. George Griffiths, M.P.

Things tsre Mending. “Things are mending. The world is coming through its troubles; getting more prosperous; growing safer. This needs no proof by instance and example.. We all feel if in our bones, just as one day about three months from now we shall realise that the spring of Prosperity’s summer has come. The British nation is like an explorer who has had to ford a deep and dangerous river. The flood still swirls about us, but we have passed the most perilous point; we have stood fast in the strongest whirlpools. We feel the ground firm beneath, our feet, shelving slowly upwards. We know now that we shall reach the other side in safety. Once more this great old country of ours has survived a terrible strain. In their traditional way, its people have gloomed and grumbled, but never at heart despaired. Three or four years ago other nations thought, and said, that we were done for. To-day their comments are a mixture of amazement, envy, and admiration.”—Mr. G. Ward Price In the “Daily Mail.”

These Ancient Writings. “In the case of ancient writings we have no certainty as to the method of their publication,” says Dr. Dibelius, Professor of Hlndelburg University. “In regard to Paul’s letters, which were copied and recopied many times for use by the restricted public of the Christian Church, we may raise the question as to the moment when they ceased to be private writings and became a lowly form of literature. Again, in tlie case of many writings of the New Testament, we cannot say to what extent they were originally intended for publication, a term which, iu this connection would mean general use in the restricted circle mentioned above. If we knew in what way the so-called. Epistle to the Ephesians was first made public, we should soon reach agreement as to its character. Primitive Christian literature passed through all the stages between private notes and the. borders of literature proper. Only two or three of its documents approximate to the literary standards of Philo and ; Josephus. Ail the rest is either quite nonllterary or of minor literary signiiacance.”

Caliban Transformed. “New York’s Commissioner of Public Correction has a new plan for the moral Improvement of dangerous criminals. He has engaged the services of experts in the art of lifting faces and modifying inelegant features among prisoners. Lift up your faces, he says in effect, and your hearts will be lifted up at the same time. For if noble thoughts ‘Begin to cast a beam on the outward

shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turn it by degrees to the soul’s

essence, Till all be made immortal,’ the converse may prove true and the mind within conform to the new beauty imposed from without. Certainly an experiment worth trying. There may, naturally, be some incurable backsliders, and writers of crime fiction must look to their technique: that criminal oar, those eyes set dose together may no longer arouse suspicion. The Devil himself, according to legend, went about disguised as a raging beauty, betrayed only by his cloven hooves. Nowadays he would consult a chiropodist.” — "Sunday Times’ (London).