OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 220, 13 June 1936, Page 26

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Hitler’s Gift Book. "Herr Hitler has it all over American authors. He lias decreed that hi.-, book ‘My Struggle’ must be presented a s a marriage gift to every couple m Germany by the registrar at the marriage ceremony. H's impossible to say at this distance whether the registrar or Germany gets studk for the price of the book, but as 700,000 couples get married every year in Germany.it can readily be seen that Herr Hitler s book will be away ahead in the best seller class. On the other hand, the presentation of ‘My Struggle’ may cause an awful drop in the number of inaniages over there. No matter how much a young man may love a girl, the thought that if he matries her be will have to read Herr Hitler’s book may cause him to go right over to the Rhine and wade out in it until his hat floats. „ By R.H.L., in the "Chicago Inbuilt.

The FIV. “It'inay be that the fly, i.i buzzing round our faces, is only trying to do what the cat does when he conies ptiring and rubbing himself against oiir legs—to flatter us with its favours and to win our good graces. It ccl ‘ fni "*> possesses many of the same (I . na | .' s •is the cat—unteacluibleness.. disobedience, and inopportune noisiness. sometimes wonder whether, if cats die not sleep so much of the time away, we should not find them as intolerable as flies. If cats were awake from morning till night and capable of coming in through the window in numbers at anv moment and creating an incessant diii, not many of, us would preserve our sickly admiration of them.. Even as u is, we resent the intrusion of other people’s cats into our houses. It is—with very few exceptions-our own cats alone that we wish to see there \nd the best cat in the world would become an irritant if there were no long periods during which he cease, io demand our attention with voice and daw and was content to become a thing of beauty sleeping betore the fire.”-—“Y-Y..” in the "Xow Statesman.'’

American View of League Prospects. "Italy is still under the League stigma of acting as an aggressor against another League member. Consistency would prompt the continuance m sanctions, but there are many indications that this is not a ease m "hid: League members will be inclined to tm idea that consistency is a virtue. An excuse may lie found for a retreat, specially if Mussolini is in a mood to make that'as easy as possible under the circumstances. Thereafter, the Covenant of the League might be revised to make it a glorified debating society. It would then be possible to say’ that it bad survived. Altogether it is a tangled skein that waits to be unravelled in Geneva, and in the European chancelleries which have been caught in its strands. But the fact remains that Italy has conquered Ethiopia. The one prediction that would seem to be perfectly safe is that the Italians are there to stay.” “The Boston Transcript.* Mass., United States of America. A Breeder of Evil.

'•Economic distress quickly trail.-, lutes itself into social •'instability and political unrest.' It opens the "’ay for the demagogue and the agitator, foments internal strife, and frequently leads to the supplanting of orderly democratic government by tyrannical' dictatorships. It breeds international friction, fear, envy and resentment, amt destroys flic very foundations of world pence.' Nations are tempted to seek escape from distress at home in military adventures beyond their frontiers. Andras fear,of armed conflict spreads, even peace-loving nations are forced lo divert their natiomil effort from the creation of wealth and from peaceful well-being to the construction of armaments."—Mr. Cordell Hull. I nitcct States Secretary of State. A Solemn Compact.

"The conviction is growing among thoughtful people in America that if the United States ami Great Britain entered into a solemn compact to out law war anywhere on earth, they could very well succeed in their objective. France would eagerly subscribe to such a compact. So would Russia. Ail the Hitlers,- Mussolinis and Japanese militarists on earth would sheath their swords in the face of such a compact. When peace was again restored in the world, the mad race of armaments abandoned and scientists and philoso pliers could work peacefully and unafraid in a world freed of the terrors of war. maybe we could make real progress in ordering the affairs of this world.”—‘‘Elizabeth City Independent" (North Carolina). U.S.A.

Britain’s Mandates. ‘‘lt is fairly clear that the Government has not closed either its doors or its mind to the possibility of giving up certain mandates in the interests of peace, and for that it is to be congratulated. Whether it is for economic reasons or merely from motives of ‘prestige,’ the dissatisfied Powers are eager for colonial possessions, and that the ‘Die-hards’ so dislike the- idea of giving them up is the best proof that mandated territories are worth having. But to what government shall they be transferred, and what are the ‘safeguards’ for the native populations? The only satisfactory answer is to the government of the League of Nations and the safeguards of League administration. In this way, by surrendering our own ‘prestige,’ which is nothing but our national vanity, we would at least lessen the Jealousy of others; it would offer to all the pride of administering subject races without giving to any that national ownership for which they are unfitted; and it would give, in prae tice as well as in theory, that absolute equality of trade promised by the League Covenant.-*- “The Manchester Guardian.”

Utilitarian Education. “Half of the students in British universities to-day began their education in elementary schools. This fact, mentioned in the Report of the University Grants Committee, is of immense significance. It means that a modern university is an exchange mart not only of knowledge, but of sympathy and social experience. It will be still more so when the newer universities are more liberally provided with halls of residence. An incidental danger of the situation is. perhaps, a certain pressure to give the curriculum a more direct ‘occupational’ bent. But a true .university will always resist having ’its nose put to the grindstone of utility.”—“The Observer" (London).

The Red Belt Round Paris. “Paris proper is only half the capital. Its three million inhabitants are matched by another three million m greater Paris, .scattered in several score industrial suburban cities. Statistics ou these extraordinary suburbs are perhaps what scare the French bourgeois most. Forty-seven of these municipalities are Communist. They have Communist mayors and councillors and they send Communist deputies to Parliament. Akin to these municipalities, and now allied with them, are fifteen Socialist, and .seven Radical towns. With Hie exception of a few cities like Aubervilliers. the special preserve of Pierre Laval, and that stockbrokers’ suburb. Neuilly, the towns around the city form an almost unbroken Leftist girdle. These are the reservoirs of the voting strength of a large part of the People’s Front, the alliance of Communist, Socialist and Radical parties.” —Frank C. Hanighen. in the “New York Times Magazine.”

Making Them Pay. “It is lo Mr. Chamberlain’s credit,” says iho “Manchester Guardian.” “that he has had the courage to begin lo make us pay. There can be no more salutary way of encouraging a more acute attention to national policy than to make its'consequences painful. The arguments for embarking on a great armaments race and. for the foreign policy with which it is. bound up will bo examined in a different light when even Hie poorest home is taxed to meet the cost. For if we look behind the gratulatory trimmings the Chancellor’s speech is much the gravest since the war. We are entering on years that, ‘are going to involve the expenditure of very great sums’;, a ‘great programme’ has to be carried through ’in a very short time’—a fiveyear lan-iod. And when this great effort is over we are not to expect that expend if uro will descend to its present level. We have Hie vista of a permanent peace-time charge of. we may reckon, more than double the charge we were meeting up to three years ago and nearly three times the cost of armaments in 1914. It is an appalling prospect.”

Worth-while Heath. “I believe that there are and have been among ns on this earth some persons who can die happily for a word, an idea, an abstract.conception. The Roman martyrs who died for Christ, and Joan of Arc, who died for God, and perhaps a half-dozen Americans who died for freedom in 1801. came, it. may be supposed, to fitting and seifsatisfactory end. But they were not you and I. or Hie man who lives next door to us. They were fanatics, chosen, a race apart. They have my admiration, but not my sympathy. I reserve my sympathy for Hie ordinary mild man who died in Alexander’s army, Hie man who was killed while kings played their field games . ip the .seventeenth century, the shopkeeper or Hie factory hand who was blown apart in Belleaii Wood for the bare word democracy. They were men who had forsworn themselves for a, bauble, a system, a crooked word. They were you and I in 1936 or 1937 or 1940 if . , .—By Irwin Shaw, in the “New York Times.”

On Their Own Feet. “Parents should exert themselves to do every tiling they reasonably can to bridge for their children the chasm that separates infantilism from maturity. irresponsible youth from responsible adulthood, formal education from reality. It is better to know how to handle matches, to realise that fire burns, than to commit daredevil arson in innocent fun. It is better, at 12, to know something about sex, work, money, poverty and evil than to be tom suddenly to pieces on encountering these things at 18 or 20. It is better to have had many a practice tilt with the big bad wolves up through youth than to be ceremoniously tossed to them for the first time on graduation day. It is better to pay out the apron strings gradually than to have them slaslico unexpectedly in a spirit of angry, disillusioned revolt. This is dangerous advice. but life is a dangerous and wonderful business. It is not at all a service to children to try. out of affection, fear or inertia, to make them think otherwise.”—Farnsworth Crowder, in "Ilygcia” (Chicago i.-

Is the League Defeated? ■■The League is not yet defeated. Sanctions have failed to do their work in time, but they are not without effect. The figures of Italian trade published at Geneva this week demonstrate that. The future, for all the enthusiasm aroused by Marshal Badoglio’s recent victories, is not so glittering for Italy. She is deeply involved in Abyssinia and has five months of rain—an element singularly damping to ardour—before her, with the steadily financial drain of a costly campaign still continuing. It is a test of endurance. If Italy foe the sake of national aggrandisement can hold out longer against the cumulative pressure of sanctions than individual League States can support the relatively light sacrifices they are making for the sake of world order ami security, then she will have to lie saluted as the triumphant destroyer both of the Abyssinian Empire and the hope of a world-so-cietv. But the League States have at least not capitulated yet. If they hold on Italy must still ultimately come to terms." —“The S’leetntor.” London.

Coddling the Farmer. ‘‘The Potato Control Act limy not he the last word in governmental meddling with American agriculture, but is certain! v the rednetio ad absurdum of the ‘bountiful but dumb’ policy toward the farmer. Fundamental farming consists of sticking a seed potato in the ground and waiting for it to grow and multiply, unless the bugs and beetles get there first. Potato farming in the modern manner means licenses and quotas, inspectors and price-fixers, standard packages and managed marketing, tines and penalties, prohibition and bootlegging, and 10,000 Government employees trying to make the system work. If it doesn’t work, as it probably won’t, the Government must invent more laws, hire more men and spend more money to make it work. That’s what happened when the lowlj spud became an economic and political problem. It’s going to happen, in turn. Io everything that grows on the farm, unless the Government learns by bitter experience to mind its own business.”—“The Houghton Line," an American House bulletin. .