SAYINGS AND WRITINGS OF THE TIMES OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 291, 4 September 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS OF THE TIMES

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

A Definition of Health. “We will take as our definition of a good standard of health, a state of wellbeing such that no improvement ban be effected by any change in the diet,” said Sir John Orr, director of the Rowet»t Research Institute, in a recent speech. “I assure you that stock farmers breeding for the market will accept no lower standard than this, and if human health and physical fitness were marketable commodities, and bad the same monetary value as the breeder’s stock, then the feeding of our children on a lower standard would be regarded as gross business inefficiency.” Democracy and Foreign Policy.

••To-day there is cause for some misgiving as to the capacity of democracy to handle delicate problems of in- • ternational relations,” said Viscount Halifax in a recent speech. “The tendency, of which there are signs today, to import into our judgments on Issues of foreign policy, ou r likes and dislikes of forms of government elsewhere is full of danger, and it is not necessary to stress the difficulties that can be created for the best Foreign Secretary by injudicious questions in Par-. Uament, or by well-intentioned but illinformed attempts to cut knots that it Is often the business of statesmanship painfully to untie. I conceive that in nothing will democracy be more severely tested than by its ability to exercise the restraint that is essential if the country is to exercise its full influence abroad, by presenting in that field a united front.”

“Zionism Without Zion.” “Principle apart, the Jews are strofigly opposed to the details of this suggested partition. Foremost in our objections is that Jerusalem is excluded, not only the old Jerusalem and the holy places, which-all Jews readily recognise should be under British or international control, but also the new Jerusalem, with its tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, its important role in the Jewish national life, and its great Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Such a Land of Israel would be Zionism without Zion. Every effort has been made to placate the Arabs at the expense of the Jews. On top of everything the Jewish State is to pay a subvention to- the Arab State, this, no doubt, as a reward to the Arabs for the slaughter of Jews by theif gunmen.”—Mr. Norman Jacobs; .secretary of the Zionist Council in Manchester.

“Walking with a Friend.” “Personally, I think one never appreites mountain scenery so much as when one is alone. It is only the solitary rambler who really communes with Nature. The most intimate friend, the best of good fellows, is apt to strike a discordant note. If only people would not consider it necessary to talk it would not matter so much. But very few can walk together without talking, and yet almost any talk is a discord among the mountains . . . And I have known more than one old friendship split on this rock of offence. Moreover, you never know what a man really is till you get him away from the trammels and conventions of his everyday life. Then you too often find that he is something quite different from irhat you thought.”—From “Holiday Rambles in the English Lake District.” by Arthur L. Bagley.

Unconquered Everest. “The main point is that Everest cannot be climbed by any route or method without risks far in excess of ordinary mountaineering risks, and the problem a mountaineer will always have to face is whether or not he is entitled to take risks over-stepping the traditional standards of safety in mountaineering in order to gain success. My own belief is that the man who climbs on the upper part ,of Everest does overstep these standards. . . . Food is useless at 27,400 feet without fuel,” says Mr. Smythe. “Something to warm the stomach is the first essential. Without warmth a man cannot live for long. He is too near the point where the oxygen he breathes is insufficient to counteract the cooling of the body by the cold air For how many days a man can live in a small tent at 27,400 feet, supplied with ample food and fuel, is a matter for conjecture. I should say not longer than a week.” —From “Camp Six,” by Mr. F. S. Smythe. A Sentinel’s Warning. >

"As a chief overseer and watchman within the Church of Christ called to discern the signs of the times I am overwhelmingly convinced of the need of the task committed to this conference in the world situation which confronts us,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury at the World Conference on the Church, Community and State held at Oxford. It is a situation of widespread dislocation and confusion and ■ of new and forceful efforts of nations to overcome them. The only power which can fully overcome them is the Gospel, but we have first to be clear ourselves as to what the Gospel really means, and then relate it to the questions of the day. The essential Gospel is unchanging, but its presentation in the twentieth century cannot be the same as in the first, or fourth, or sixteenth, or nineteenth centuries. There are many tendencies and activities in the world to-day which cause grave disquiet. But in many of them there is good as well as evil. It is for us not merely to criticise and counteract what is evil, but to discern and strengthen what is good—to liberate the good from the evil which entangles it”

Arab and Jew. “Jewish immigration has unquestionably conferred great benefits on the Arabs of Palestine, but it has also given an immense stimulus to Arab antiJewlsh feeling. External factors have encouraged and influenced the growth of an Arab nationalism which has undoubtedly come to stay.’ The Arabs lose districts which have been theirs for many centuries; but they gain sovereignty in the relatively large area that remains. They are united to their kinsfolk across the Jordan; they are no longer debarred from contact with other Arab States; they are freed from their fear of being swamped by Jewish imm’gration and of losing their Holy Places to the newcomers; in short, from ‘second-class’ Arabs they attain equality with the other free Arab nations whom they have envied for so many years. The Jews do not gain Jerusalem, a city which can never be monopolised by the followers of any one faith; but for the first time since the Temple went down in flames before the legions of Titus they win sovereignty and freedom in their own land under their own flag, and will have unlimited freedom to Immigrate Into their own ►State.”-—"The Times.”

First and Last Trams. “When the last Birkenhead . tram reaches its shed to-night, Europe’s first street tramway will have ended its long and useful career,” said the “Liverpool Post” recently. “There have been trams in Birkenhead since ■IB6O, when -the municipal authorities had the foresight to adopt the new transport system devised by an American inventor. Their courage was justified. Before long their example was followed by countless- towns and cities throughout Europe. But modern traffic has raised problems which were, not dreamt of in 1860, and new conditions in Birkenhead have led to the gradual replacement of trams by buses. There is one odd thing to be noted: buses were used in Europe long before trams, and it will be strange if tramways go altogether and Europe returns, to the bus.”

“Kruger v. Rhodes.” “Native policy in South Africa,” says the “Birmingham Post,” “in the last two years, has developed—if we may so put it—on Kruger rather than on Rhodes lines. After the Statute of Westminster, Great Britain has neither the will nor the power to influence South Africa’s native policy, little as she may like it The protectorates are in a different case. Just because the Union to-day is so much its own master, natives outside the Union object to transfer. So long as they do object, the British attitude to transfer must be tentative. If General Hertzog can conciliate the natives in his own territory, he will find transfer easy—because economically and politically it is desirable. Till he can conciliate those natives, Great Britain is bound, as a trustee moral and political, to stand in the way of transfer by force, however attractive on political and economic grounds.” Japan’s “Great Ideal.”

“For the past seventy years Japan has gone through many ups and downs, from the international viewpiont. At the beginning she was disdained, made fool of, then was pitied or loved, yet not much taken notice of. But she has later been feared rather than respected ; detested instead of being shown an attachment Plainly speaking, the present situation is that the rest of the world would like to give Japan a sound thrashing. At the League of Nations conference at Geneva Japan experienced it again and again. But such an attitude taken by the other Powers is neither deplorable nor to be resented. Nor is it fearful to her. This may be said to be a course she has had to take while in her development. However, Japan should not so long remain ‘ft bated child’; she may not be able to go on still further as a focus of the world’s hatred. We ought to dash forward to the goal of the great ideal of ‘the benevolent has no enemy.’”— lichiro Tokutomi, in the “Japan Magazine.”

Salute to the Chemist. "Generally speaking,” said Lord Leverhulme on a recent occasion, “it Is true to say that scientific research leads through the elimination of waste to a conservation of resources, and the chemist is a brilliant example of this truth. He conserves our resources in a variety of ways. He develops substitutes and thereby releases more costly materials for use in other processes, where,' In the past, perhaps, it has been impossible tp make sufficient use of them; in developing these substitutes he uses materials which in some cases were previously of no economic value; similarly he enables us to make use of certain of Nature’s products which previously could not be economically exploited; and in general he goes far toward ensuring that each material' at our disposal is put to the most economical use possible. In years to come it will, I think, be precisely for this conservation of our resources that the chemist will receive the greatest recognition from a world wherein the gradual exhaustion of Nature’s resources is being accelerated by the increasing heavy demand which man is making on them.” Hertzog and the Protectorates.

“It is inconceivable for me to accept that there can be much further delay in the transfer of the territories, or that the Union Government should be compelled bo have recourse to the South Africa Act, and request the King by means of a decision in Parliament to accede to the transfer. It is clear to me that in British quarters the question of t>he transfer is being played with in a manner which does not keep adequate count of the right of the Union to demand that the transfer shall not be delayed any longer and that the Union’s request must be fulfilled. It Is obvious that the matter cannot be left at this. The Union’s right to the transfer of the administration of the territories to it is indisputable. That the time to transfer them to the Union has already transpired was conceded two years ago. It is therefore the duty of Great Britain to see to it that everything is done to advance the transfer which she undertook under the South Africa Act or to which she thereby agreed, and that her officials shall be instructed to act in the spirit of her obligations nobody will deny.”—General Hertzog, on the proposal to transfer the native protectorates from British to South African control.

The Sermon on the Mount.

“The question of the applicability of the law of the Kingdom to life in the actual world is of central importance. It is not, in my opinion, possible to maintain that the principles of the Sermon on the Mount are of limited application. They are not intended as guides for conduct in the short interim before the end. Nor again can they be thought of as applicable only to a limited and select body of persons, the Church gathered out of the world. They are in the true sense statements of a universal ideal and sum up the conditions of a perfect society. It is true, however, that the principles of the Sermon on the Mount in their literal sense cannot be directly applied to the civilised community as it at present exists. The reason is that society is organised on principles which are largely at variance with the Kingdom and consist of persons who are largely dominated by motives hostile to it. The individual Christian has the duty of adjusting his- conduct so that it approximates as closely as possible to that ideal conduct which is the norm of the Kingdom.”—The Dean of St. Paul’s.