OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 190, 8 May 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Seeking After Truth. "Would the amuyst of contemporary gang warfare in Chicago (with all ! ts analogy to Scottish history of the sixteenth century) be wise to accept as gospel the sayings of the ‘b g shot’ of a contending gang? In E: gland to-day is a modernist bishop sure to come scathless- through a cloud of AngloCatholic witness? Are the v’ews of newspaper barons on. political leaders wno differ from them to be taken by future research workers as beyond mortal error? If the seeker after truth must pick his way eaiefnlly across the fiats of tit’s sophisticated century, how delicately should lie tread the mazes of a society where variety in wording a creed led naturally to he faggot, poltieal discord was stilled hj dagger or axe. and legal procedure shortened with the tnuinb screw!” — Mr. Robert Gore-Brown, in his book, “Loyd Bothwell.’’

Thrift as a Social Virtue. "There will be unanimity of praise,” said Lord Maegregor Mitehell, "of the inculcating of thrift into the habits of the people That is a big thing, but there is a bigger thing still. No person, in the cultivation of the virtue of thrift, should ever lose the power of spending money. Thrift is a means to an end, but if it is directed to the mere accumulation of wealth, that end is not wholly accomplished. If. however, with the capacity of saving is combined the power of spending properly, thrift, indeed, becomes a most potent power for the good of the world. There are three primary necessities in life.” he continued, "a comfortable, sanitary home, good health, and good food. Will any individual venture to assert that he or she would he acting with wisdom in sacrificing any of those necessities in order to hoard money when they could be happy from the wise use of the savings of thrift?"

When War Was War. “In the old Greek days war was war.” says Genera] Sir lan Hamilton. “That was the way for the old front line fighters—yon lost and yon went under: you won and took it easy for the rest of your lives. Nowadays. whether yon win or lose, equallv vnn go under. Even if yon escape shellshock, blindness, poison gas. yon go limping along for the rest of your days, with a millstone round your necks. One or two of onr top-notch House of Coni mons speakers told ns. a night or two ago. that the best way to persuade two gentlemen who own a lot of bombs and bayonets to come into the League of Nations will be to get an enormous number of bombs and bayonets ourselves. Can that really be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Is there no way out? Why can’t the League of Nations, Russia. France, the peace-loving South American Republics and the Swiss, who don’t trust the League a yard, and have a splon did army of 400,000 men—offer to lay down their arms provided Hitler and Mussolini would swear to follow suit? Have they seriously tried it? If not. why not?”

Th" Big Jeb In India. “There are at the moment in British India 659“ modern hospitals ami dispensaries, of which about 4250 are in rural areas.” writes the Marquess of Dnfferin and Ava in rhe "Empire Review.” "It may thus be seen the magnitude of the problem confronting an Indian politician desirous of giving adequate hospital accommodation in the rural districts. The Indian peasant as.everyone knows is not healthy. There are about one hundred million people in British India alone, suffering from malaria: two m !, lion people suffer from tuberculosis, to which Indians a r e very subject; a million people suffer from leprosy; how many have hookworm it is impossible to comnute. So m>’"h' for the living. Of the dead, in 1934. a ‘hoaT-hv’ year, of 6.909,009 deaths. 200.000 died of cholera almost certainty caught on some pilgrimage, and 4.000,090 died of fever. In fact, only almuf one in five d’ed of old a-'e. Tho=e .fi-’tires sneak for themselves. They tell of undernourishment, poverty. ignorance, in a jealous and cruel climate. Of all the services whir-h we are about to hand on to the Indians this is the one that offers most scope for improvement.”

Conciliation or Divorce? Criticism of the Marriage Bill, now before Parliament, on the ground that the omission of the conciliation clause made it “a dangerous measure.” was made by Mr. Claud Mullins, the metro- « politan magistrate, in a recent speech. “This omission,” be declared, ’would make it possible for poor people to go direct to the Divorce Court without being brought into the conciliation machinery of the police courts. In seven months of the Matrimonial Court in South London. I issued 220 summonses to wives, all for separation. Of these, 108 were never heard at all—we were able to satisfy them through social help and the summonses were withdrawn. Of the 112 cases that were heard, 23 were dismissed, and in 89 orders were granted. The Marriage Bill proposes to add to the existing grounds for divorce the grounds of cruelty, desertion and incurable insanity. Persistent cruelty is exactly the same in the police court as in the divorce court. In the last four months I had summonses for persistent cruelty in my list. Every one of those, if the Marriage Bill, as now existing, had been law, could have gone straight to the Divorce Court. Of the 51 only 22 came before me. The others were disposed of by voluntary conciliation. In 29 cases the wife realised of her own free will that it was better to try and improve the home than to break it up.”

Some Better Way. “You can understand the feelings of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has been labouring now for a number of years to build up the finances of the country,” said Mr. Neville Cham berlain, speaking at Edinburgh “He has seen his efforts bearing fruit and his anticipations more than fulfilled, and, just at a time when he might hope l to reap the harvest in the shape of remissions of taxation, he is obliged to divert his surplus to the forging of weapons of defence which bring in no economic return. Nothing but stark necessity would have made me confess to such a negation of common sense and common humanity. I cannot dismiss the hope that we and the nations of Europe will presently find some less suicidal way of ending our fears and suspicions of one another before we are all ruined by our own efforts to defend ourselves.”

Religious Imperialism. “One of the astoui.ding imperialism* of the West." writes Mrs. Pearl Buck, "has been the domination over the Cb.nese of Methodists. Presbyterians, Baptists and what not, to the numner of well over a hundred d'fferent types of the Protestant Christian religion alone This lias beet, in China, more than a spiritual imperialism—it has been phys.cal ns wen There lias been much talk of political spheres of influence. of Japan amt (icrimin) ami England and France dividing China into areas for trade .-'ml pirner. Bin the missionaries divided China, 100. Certain provinces, certain areas, were allotted to certa’n denominations for propaganda, and there was supposed to be no overstepping.”

On Making Money. ’lf you want no more than to make money, if that is all there is in your mind, then the sooner you give up the idea the better for you and everybody else,” writes Sir Ernest Benn in the “Evening News,” of London. "Besides, you will find money a nuisance The strain and trouble of not losing it is of itself an intolerable burden. It will tend to spoil your character, develop the spirit of meanness, get you into the habit of measuring by money, values alone, bring you false friends: and, further; there is the danger that it may be made at somebody else’s expense.” Facing East and West.

"The most striking feature of the Russian army is its division into two armies, one in the Far East and one in the West." says a "Round Table” writer. "Each army is independent of the other and has its own system of supplies, reserves and transportation Nor is the civilian population without a part in the campaign of military preparedness. The ‘Osoviakhim.’ or Civilian Defence Society, is engaged in a many-sided effort to train the country for war. There is hardly a factory, a '.ollective farm or school .without a branch of the ‘Osoviakhim. ’ It is the work of this society that makes the outsider so keenly aware of the earnestness with which Rus.sinus regard the danger of war with Germany or Japan. In 1035 the ’Osoviakhim’ trained as air pilots 3500 youths who learned flying in the hours they-could, .fnare from their work or studies. In 1930 it trained SOOD pilots. During 1934 and 1935 it trained 990.00() civilians in marksmanship, one million in anti-gas and chemical warfare. one million in map-reading. 1-J million in the care of horses. iiOOO as mechanics of aeroplane engines. The slogan now is: ‘Our youth must become a generation of winged people,’ and it is doubtful if there is a country in the world in which youth is so absorbed in aviation as in Russia.”

Stop Fooling! “I think that every lawyer, every coroner, and every chief officer of police is familiar with the fact that many accidents are caused by action taken in terror inspired b.v a sudden strident horn. I believe there are few’ motorists who have not themselves experienced the difficulty caused by somebody sounding one of these instruments in the act of overtaking, and who do not know the difficulty of retaining at that moment all their concentration and control. In the cities of Finland, where for years hooting has been prohibited, accidents have been reduced by approximately a half. In Rome and other cities of Italy an enormous reduction of accidents has followed the total prohibition of booting. There is any amount of experience abroad to sliow that, if you prohibit hooting, you increase public safety, in addition to contributing to the amenities. In Sweden hooting is prohib’ted except in two cases. It is allowed in case of emergency, that is to say. to prevent an accident not otherwise avoidable. It is also permitted in the country, and I believe enjoined. on the motorist in the act of overtaking. I believe that this prohibition works exceedingly well. —Mr. Hore Beiisha, British Minister of Transport. Laying Up Treasures.

“If tlie well-to-do citizen to-day, after paying half his income in rates and taxes, likes to give one-tenth of tlie remainder in charity, we commend his generosity; but it is a much greater sacrifice for him than it was for his grandfather,” says the Very Rev. W R. Inge, D.D., in tlie “Guardian.” “After satisfying his conscience in tlie matter of charity, ( and the rapacity of the Exchequer in the matter of taxes, what is our middle-class citizen to do with what is left of his income? I do not think that slinging texts will help us much. We are not to ‘lay up treasures for ourselves upon earth’: but ‘he who provideth not for his own family hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.’ Modern social conditions are so utterly unlike those of Palestine in the time of our Lord that we shall be wise not to look for explicit rules but to remember that Christianity introduced a new standard of values, by which money and the things which money can buy are lightly esteemed. There is not much about distribution in the New Testament: what is said about consumption is all in favour of a very simple life.”

Imagination. “To my mind, imagination, that power by which wo can instantly and sympathetically comprehend the thoughts and feelings of other people, and can picture vividly for ourselves and others what has happened or what might happen, is of much greater importance in a training for life than the worship of rule or a capacity for enumerating essential and. accessory parts of Howers, yon may say that, like taste, imagination cannot lie taught: and that a rule is the only thing that a person without taste and without imagination can be persuaded to grasp. It would be a misfortune if that were true, and in such case .teaching could only produce prigs and a series of false and arbitrary values But that is not the view held by the more didactic scientists who believe that the more rigid a system is the more effective it must be. Either, therefore, science, has been captured by zealots for standardisation, and so turned from its true purpose of enlarging the field of knowledge upoii which the imagination can work; or it involves such a dead weight upon the human mind that its present domination will have to be rebelled against for the sake of future civilisations.”— Mr. Frank Swinuerton.