OVERSEAS OPINIONS |

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 17

OVERSEAS OPINIONS |

Youth in Dictatorships.

“Two facts must strike any impartial observer of the young Nazis in Germany or the young Fascists in Italy. The first is their real sincerity, their passion of conviction. To deny the sincerity of these hundreds of thousands of young men is to make all scientific analysis-of the phenomena of our time impossible. But if it be silly to deny their sincerity it is sillier still to assert that they have arrived at their hatred of Communism or' Liberalism by any impartial or objective examination of Communism or Liberalism. Their “convictions” consist in a parrot repetition of incantations the meaning of which they plainly do not understand. They hate the Communist in the same way that the Catholic peasant of the fifteenth century hated the heretic or both hated witches.” — Sir Norman Angell. Press Taboo.

“One reason why the controversy between the King and his Ministers has had so stunning an effect in Great Britain is the .fact that the British Press so long made the subject taboo. A defence of this reticence is offered by the ‘Manchester Guardian.’ It explains that British newspapers were well aware of the gathering crisis, but felt it to be of such intense ‘gravity’ that it could not be discussed or referred to. This is a queer reason, all the Queerer on account of the source from which it comes. One can recall several grave British crises, such as the Boer War and the outbreak of the Great War, in which the ‘Manchester Guardian’ did not feel compelled to remain silent. On the contrary, it thought itself under obligation to inform the people of the fact and to endeavour to lead them to sound decisions regarding national policy. This time it held its tongue for months.”— “New York Times.”

Friendship. “We are very much at fault in our indiscriminate use of the word ‘friend.’ Nothing is so common as to hear it said of a ‘popular’ man—horrid adjective—that he has many friends. This means that he is a good fellow, with some sort of appeal, and not too much superiority to discourage familiarity. The careful language to which I was alluding above would have retranslated the statement ‘he has many friends’ into the less gaudy but more accurate one, ‘he has few enemies.’ *No thoughtful person who has pondered what real friendship is will take it for granted that even the most attractive person can have many friends. It is as if we said of a brilliant man whom the women admire that he could have many wives. Reciprocity enters the concept of friendship as well as that of marriage and our store of sentiment is not inexhaustible.”—Abbe Ernest Dimnet, in “The Rotarian” (Chicago). Brighter Clothes for Men. “At a moment when the British Government is introducing a Bill to prohibit the wearing of political uniforms, the Loudon Passenger Transport Board is about to experiment with brighter uniforms for busmen. It evidently is recognised that busmen’s coats, unlike political shirts, have no tails to be trodden on. The new uniform is to be maroon and gray, and it will be the first departure from dark blue that has ever been made. Such a break with tradition must be significant indeed, though -whether it will make busmen leaders of a new fashion or leave them stranded as on a bright island in a sombre-sea remains to be seen. For eighty years men have bowed beneath the stern decrees of their tailors and the bravest have won no more decoration from these commanders of fashion than a pinstripe. The most widely-spread uniform is that of the man-in-the-street; and one touch of colour in it only makes the wdiole world grin. It is a pity that such is the case; for surely, anything that helps to brighten our gray cities, and that allows greater scope to individual taste, is not to be despised.”—“Christian Science Monitor.”

Russia’s Answer. “The announcement that the new Russian railway is finished comes with dramatic suddenness after the GermanJapanese agreement. It is Russia’s answer to the Japanese challenge. What warj to be done to make good the loss of the Chinese Eastern Railway and to ensure rapid communication with the eastern provinces? The Soviet Government decided on two steps—first, to double the existing single track from Lake Baikal to Khabarovsk; second, to build an altogether new line parallel with the old one, further north, and safely out of the way of Japanese attacks. They set about these tasks with characteristidally ruthless energy, huge masses of forced labour being sent into Siberia. It is estimated that there were at one time as many as 100,000 working on the railways. By the end of 1935 the double track had been laid from Lake Baikal to Khabarovsk-r-1300 miles of track in two years. A year later the second stage of the plan is completed. A new railway terminus and industrial centre has been built— Komsomolsk, on the Amur; and the first through train from Moscow has arrived.”—“Evening Standard” (London ).

Fustian and Blatherskite. “I have listened many, many times to Socialist oratory about ‘the Capitalist’ and his wicked plots; learning from these orators, as I sat there, just what my motives, my objects, my plans and crimes were—for I, as much as anybody perhaps, am ‘the’ Capitalist. But. however ignorant I may be of certain subtle points of the Marxian doctrine, there is just one subject in the world upon which I happen to be better informed than those orators are: that subject is my own plans, objects, motives. And on that subject, upon which, in the nature of things, I must know more than they do, they talk, if you will allow me to say so, the post piteous fustian and blatherskite. What they are searching for evidently is an outlet for emotion. But the cost to their own movement of their emotional entertainment is a high one. It so twists strategy and policy as to stand in the way of co-operations which would be of immense service to the workers: and it adds enormously to the resistance which Socialism has to encounter.” — An employer, quoted in a House of Commons speech.

Simple English. Londbn newspapers report that rhe campaign against what is called business English and bad English generally, inaugurated several months ago by A. P. Herbert, member of Parliament and a member of the staff of “Punch," is meeting with success. Leading commercial training schools are sweeping away trite phrases and teaching the business men of the future to write simple English. Sir John Squire, a well-known author, declared recently: “Business English is abominable. It pretends to be efficient and is merely long-winded. Why write, ‘We are in receipt of your esteemed favour and beg to acknowledge same-,’ instead of ‘Thank you for your letter’?” It is a steadying thought that the people of Great Britain, confronted as they are with dangerous European problems and the imminence of war, can still find time to devote attention to the improvement of their everyday speech. —“Calgary Herald” (Canada). Hereditary Monarchy.

“Hereditary monarchy—as we all realise by this time as we never realised before—is an extraordinary instrument for symbolising and concentrating the national idea. It is almost self-perpetu-ating. It works beautifully and automatically most of the time. We should not complain too bitterly, then, if it gave us a little trouble during the past few weeks. Evidence has been given of one thing which is more important and cheering than is necessary to offset the trouble. It has been shown that the Empire possesses the necessary statesmanship to get the system wound up and started again when a hitch comes in the running. Eventually it may become necessary to agree on another symbol. The hereditary monarchy may go, not because the British people would want to get rid of crowns and thrones as they have gone elsewhere, but because they may develop a growing reluctance among members of the Royal Family to take on an almost intolerable burden.”—“Ottawa Citizen.” When Men Are Forty.

"A strong back and a weak mind can get along in the backwoods. After all, you have to be only .001 per cent, wiser than the bear in order to lick him. And you needn’t go to high school to learn how to swing an axe. But as backwoods vanish, and the front yard fills the one-time wilderness, society moves on to complex enterprises in which strong backs count for little and weak minds are useless. Old societies depend upon the elders, just as young ones depend on youth. This, I believe, is the hardest of all trends for people with the old frontier tradition to understand. Once grasped, it brings to light tens of thousands of high careers and good jobs for people past -10. Many of these are already beckoning. But most 1 will not be ready for several years, while a few cannot be seized until after certain world events shall have transpired.”—Dr. Walter Bitkin, in “The Rotarian” (Chicago). Wanted a Pacifist Technique,

“In the prevention of further civil war it would seem that pacifists might concentrate upon the introduction of a little of the pacifist technique into the advocacy of rival social theories. If solutions are to be peaceful we cannot go on claiming for our especial social and political doctrines complete infallibility and complete irreconcilability with other doctrines. It is impossible for CoiZervatives on one side, to go on saying: ‘Socialism is the enemy and must be ruthlessly repressed; there can be no compromise with it’; and for Socialists to go on saying, ‘The whole capitalist order must be swept away and property abolished,’ and to go on personifying ‘the capitalist class’ in an evil-looking ‘person’ emphasising the conflict of class as irreconcilable, insisting that there can be no gradual approach and increasing co-operation by consent. It ,is folly for Tory and Socialist respectively to go on in this strain and at the same time disparage ’war.’ For war will come as the direct result of a psychological momentum inherent in these attitudes.”—Sir Norman Angell. The Nation Awakening.

“The managers of the totalitarian State, so prodigal of expenditure for beautification and entertainment, seemed to be obliged to declare reduced dividends for capitalists and wage reductions for the workers year after year. By 1934 Italian people might still think they had made a good deal in purchasing unity and order at the expense of intellectual and business liberty, but they recognised that unity and order had not brought an economic improvement to the worker, the small business man, nor even, unless he were a Government contractor or favourite, to the big man. Far more are the Italian people aware of this in 193 G. The Government has long since ceased publishing such statistics as price indices or average wages, but the traveller can to-day overhear a loud murmur of anxiety about prices of bread, butter, meat, cheese, pasta—an aggrieved muttering and questioning how one can hope to get through another year with such prices not withstanding wage increases of G to 10 per cent.”—From the ‘•Manchester Guardian” (special correspondent, Rome.)

Britain at the Cross-roads. “The one thing certain is that on the slope on which we find ourselves we cannot stand still. We'may attempt a retreat into plutocracy. There are symptoms that something of the sort is being considered to-day, but I very much doubt if that is a possible path either. No group of people can for long continue to work purely for profit, a system in which they no longer believe; and that is almost as true, be it remembered, of those whom it benefits as of those whom it does not. It is not enough that a system pays you individually, you must be able to believe that it is right. And although it is true that the fact that a system pays you goes a very long way toward helping you to believe that it is right, it does not go the whole way. History has proved that over and over again. To lose faith is to lose power. The human anima], as was pointed out close on two thousand years ago. cannot live without ideals. That is a plain fact, not a question of what man ought or ought not to do. but of what he can o r cannot do. lie must have godsend he must believe In them. He is. as Canon Raven recently remarked, a worshipping animal.”—Lady Rhondda, in "Time and Tide.”