OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 172, 17 April 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Ender the Flag.

“I do not wish to say anything against the flag—it is all right.. I want to consider what it means. There have been many great Englishmen—and many great Frenchmen. Germans, and Russians,” said Sir. Bertrand Russell in a recent speech. “When you get Englishmen collected under the flag it is not the same set of Englishmen that you would admire elsewhere. Newton and Darwin are absent, but Nelson and Wellington are there. The flag is essentially concerned with the militant aspect. I do not think the collecting of children’s interests around the flag is good. 1 would rather collect them round a symbol of civilisation instead of war.” Broadening Official Minds.

“It would help to break down the caste spirit if officials in, for example, the Ministry of Health were sent to serve with the local authorities in the provincial towns or the rural counties for a few years—and vice versa. The Post Office lias recently introduced an excellent rule whereby young men coming into the administrative class are compelled to serve in the provinces for several years before going to headquarters. It would help to disperse the traditional narrowness of the Treasury attitude toward expenditure on the social services and public works if some of their men had worked in socialised undertakings where large capital expenditure is freely embarked upon without a latent sense of sin. And if a still more ambitious step were taken whereby exchanges could be arranged between the Dominion services and the English services, complaints about the cloistered atmosphere in the Government offices might tend to be more uncommon.”— Dr. William A. Robson, LI.M., Ph.D.

"Abolish Slumps.” “If our diagnosis is correct,” writes Mr. A. W. Knight in his book, “Abolish Slumps,” “a ‘planning’ community must ensure, on penalty of very severe Josses if not carried out, th,at the total rate of flow of spending is always adjusted to equality with the rate of flow of incomes—a thing clearly not possible without great prescience. Planning of the distribution of incomes is essential. That separate individuals, each of -whom is actuated by the profit motive, should undertake the function is inimical to communal well-being. It see'ms that a Central Economic Authority should always be assessing the actual volume and rate of advance of total productive power, balancing the advance in calculated reductions of prices or in raising all money incomes, or in increasing leisure. Total effective demand must always be kept taut against total powe rto produce. The planning of incomes is locked to the planning of prices; they must be planned together.” Tragedies of Industry.

"My intimate ■connection with the tragedies of industry keeps vividly before me the distress connected with the cutting down of customary expenditure in the absence of provisions for the industrial dislocation which follows. The fact that the reduction is to apply to expenditure, which we regard as vicious, should not blind our eyes or harden our hearts to the consequent distress. Until the nation is prepared to offer every man in the lighting services, or engaged•on war work, a position not inferior to the one he occupies, and without injury to another, there is a dark side to our advocacy of disarmament. An ardent desire for international peace calls for the consideration of such changes in our economic and industrial life as shall make disarmament possible, without intensifying the communal sin of excluding a man from his proper share in the work and the product of Hie community. Believing that existing conditions render disarmament impossible without serious hardship and injustice 1 am impelled to offer some proposals for an alternative organisation of society.”—From “'The Total Abolition of Unemployment,” by Shipley N. Brayshaw, M.l.Mech.E. The Spanish Cockpit.

“There is no doubt whatever that foreign interference in an internal quarrel can only make matters worse in Spain. No permanent settlement can be reached except by the Spaniards themselves. Neither a Red Government helped to victory by Russian aeroplanes and tanks and brigades of foreign volunteers, nor a Fascist Government assisted to power by German and Italian troops, could hope to command any real national allegiance in Spain. The Spaniards, like every other nation, have the right to determine for themselves the kind of government they prefer, and in the long run they will exercise that right, no matter what foreign individuals, doubtless with the best of intentions, may do to drive them one way or another. Their quar- . rels now seem irreconcilable and barbarities have been perpetrated on both sides which must leave a long legacy of bitterness. Sooner or later they mn<t inevitably come to terms. Meanwhile the more outsiders take part in the quarrels, supporting and inflaming one party against the other, the longer will the settlement be.” —"The Times” (London). Equal Pay for Men and Women. "The argument that the State gets less value in the long run from female employment, than from male employment, has been contradicted by experience. It condemns women to permanent. inescapable and inevitable inferiority. and it is not one that ought to have been made by a responsible Minister of this modern world. It is unfair that women should be subject to this disability, because it is wrongly assumed that their family obligations are less than those of men. Mr. Morrison, when Financial Secretary, told the House of Commons that if equal pay were given to women in the Civil Service it would make the service so attractive to them that they would swamp the men. If they can beat the men. let them. Why should a woman who does work of equal value to that of a man be paid less for it? I would very respectfully, but very firmly. say to the Government that they cannot leave the question where it is. I have no doubt that if a referendum were taken of the whole country we would carry it. It is not only a woman’s question: it is a social question. It is not good for men that women .should do equal work for less pay.”—Major J. W. Hills, M.P.

Food First. “Before succumbing to the present clamour for physical training the state should concentrate on the problem of nutrition. Our genius and constitution alike demand turbulent liberty,, not arbitrary order. The feats of daring, of mental and physical endurance, whether at the equator or the poles, in the Himalaya or the Arabian deserts, are the product of the spirit of the British race, not of the gymnasium or ■the barrack square. Drake, Cook, Scott, Lawrence owed nothing to formal physical training.”—Professor 11. A. Harris in a letter to “The Times,” London. Compromise. “No socialist denies all private ownership; no capitalist denies all public ownership. Every possible solution is a compromise. Every possible change from the present order to a ' better one is through a series of compromises. The Church, for example, is an owner of property. Without such ownership, in the present order of society. it cannot function as a social institution. Church property is, however, in a privileged position, being exempt from tax. Here at once is a compromise. Shall the Church claim social privilege or shall it practise social obligation? As regards taxes, it has compromised duties for the sake of rights, which is the contrary of its teachings. A church may own sufficient property to be a landlord, like Trinity Church, in New York City: or it may have an endowment. In either case, it has, as we say, ‘a stake’ in the capitalistic order of society, and. if it is to be successful, must be guided by the very profit motive which Christian ethics challenges.”—Dr. Brightman.

Power and the Machine. “We are all no doubt agreed that there is a disparity between the machinery and the motive power. But to me it does not seem natural to remove this disparity by reducing the amount of the machinery, as long as it is possible to increase the amount of power, and thus equalise things in that way. I can re. member the time when the threshing machine was run by hand in my home community. Several shifts were necessary, and the work was very strenuous. Now it is being done differently. ’By means of modern motive power a hundred times as much is threshed each day, and the men need not work as much as they did before. It is the power that makes the difference. It threshes, sifts and cleans the grain all in one operation and saves the work of many men. I often think of this when I observe the situation in the Christian enterprises of to-day. That the machinery has become too heavy is because we are operating it with human labour instead of running it by power from above.”— From “Prayer,” by Professor 0. Hallesby, of the Independent Theological Seminary, Oslo, Norway.

All Roads to—Where? " “They all lead the same way home, these roads, whatever the signpost says, that’s one thing sure. I’ve only to keep on and am bound to progress, no matter where the civilised world (so-called) as a whole may be bound,” writes Hamish Maclaren in his book, “Cockalorum.” '“Some say it’s regularly retrogressing; and it surely looks so, on a superficial survey; but I’m no croaker. There’s a good argument 'for the case that the Sapiens crowd advances step by step toward some noble if at the moment obscure destiny, if only, because it can’t go back. And no doubt it’s a marvellously inventive breed. The only principle I hold fast on to throughout is that of personal liberty: which, in spite of minor pests, is still more or less of a possibility in the Britannic lands. Ineffectual as it may be, our fumbling old democracy remains, according to my view, centuries ahead of the military conscriptive ramps, Fascist or Communist, I don’t care what yon call them; and my advice to Government is: keep it so at your peril.” More People.

“A natural increase of population is the best shock-absorber that the community can possess. A moment’s reflection will show why this is the case. Assume that 1,000,000 units of a commodity are made by 100,000 men, and that there is an increase of population of 2 per cent, per annum, so that in five years 1,100,000 units will be consumed and employ 110,00 men. Now assume the introduction of a new invention which enables 1,100,000 units to be made by 100,000 men. There will be no displacement of existing labour, but only a redirection of new and potential labour from that industry to other fields. Again, a considerable reduction in demand per head can be sustained without dislocation, if the actual aggregate of production demanded is maintained by increasing numbers. The affected industry can remain static and need not become derelict. New entrants to industry will be directed to those points where purchasing power, released through labour-saving devices, is creating new opportunity with new products. New capital is also naturally directed into the new channels, instead of into additions to the old industry.”—Sir Josiah Stamp.

Education for Citizenship. “Education for citizenship in an international world is a many-sided ami long-continued process. It begins with early lessons in love and consideration for others in the family circle. It broadens to take in strangers to the family circle, other groups, foreigners, and other nations. It involves indirect training in citizenship,” writes Dr. Olive A Wheeler. D.Sc., in her book, “Creative Education and the Future.” “In the school there should be appropriate methods of discipline to prepare for freedom and to encourage co-opera-tion ; and right methods of teaching to develop powers of clear and unprejudiced thinking. The whole life of the educational institution and the indirect moral training given in every subject and activity must prepare its members to undertake their daily work in the spirit of service, to have a deep concern for the well-being of their fellows and of the community generally. Later there should be the explicit study of social, national, and international problems; and in maturity there will be the practical experience of fulfilling the duties of citizenship. The highest education in citizenship will come from a faithful performance of the work of life, from achieving a tolerance of differences between individuals and between nations, and from the actual practice of a morality based on persuasion rather than on force,”