OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

What ths Democracies Must Face. “The democracies must not only be adequately armed for defence, they must be willing to make clear the point at which they are prepared to risk war rather than retreat,” says a writer in “The Bound Table.” “A second conclusion is that if the socialist and democractic States were to join forces against the Fascist States, as certain elements on the Left recommend, it is by no means beyond question on which side the preponderance of power would lie. The United States must certainly. be counted out of such a system —though if a world war went on long enough she might be drawn in before the end. Most of the small nations would side with their strongest neighbours or stay neutral, like the Nether-' lands in the late war, rather than invite conquest, as did Rumania, by taking action against a first-class Power without hope of immediate and adequate reinforcement. The nations of the Commonwealth should not only act together themselves, but should also work in the closest co-operation with all other democracies, especially the United States.” British Interests in Hong Kong. “I would ask the House to consider,” asserted Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, “the size and Importance of our interests in China. It is no mere question of the profits of a few capitalist adventurers. It touches the livelihood of scores of our fellow-countrymen. Our total trade with .China for the first nine months of this year amounted to £12,000,000, excluding Hong Kong and Manchuria, and the leased territories of China. Our investments in China amount altogether to something like £240,000,000. Our invisible exports in the shape of interest on loans, earnings of shipping—4o per cent, of the trade of China is carried in British ships—insurance, banking and profits of private firms with immense investments in real estate are enormous. Then there is the trade of the ports of Shanghai and Hong Kong. They rank fifth and sixth among the ports of the world. There is nqf a port in Europe, except Rotterdam, not one in Britain except London, not one on the continent for the United States of America except New York, and not one in Asia, except Kobe, which has a trade equal to the trade of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Let us make no doubt about it. The respect that the militarists of Japan will show for British interests will be in direct ratio to our capacity and resolve to defend them.” Housing in Britain. “T do not underate the force of favouring economic, breezes such as the reduction in interest rates and —what is not less important—the adaption of building society mortgage technique, the rise in real income and so forth,” said Sir Harold Bellman, head of one of the great British building societies in a recent speech. “But these by themselves were not sufficient to fan output up to boom proportions. This rests in the last analysis on public appetite: and public appetite has become omnivorous in the last decade. Furthermore, it is an appetite that grows on what it feeds. The force of example—the fact that one’s friends have moved into a new house, with all the modern amenities —is of enormous potency. This is, or rather will be, a governing factor in future housing output, at least over, say the next decade. But obviously the question is whether appetite can be effectively linked to capacity for satisfaction. Here the vital factor is the course of real wages. If labour can maintain —or better still, improve—its standard of living, this will Indubitably be reflected in a demand for better housing, which mainly means new housing. For the mass of workers housing has been one of the least progressive elements in social life throughout the Industrial Revolution.” A Plea for the League. “Surely the concept of a world society, settling its affairs not by force of war, but common consultation and in co-operation, is essentially sound,” said General Smuts in a recent appeal on behalf of the League of Nations. The Covenant simply carries a step further the process by which the State had already succeeded in suppressing private feuds and public violence and has substituted

peaceful Parliamentary action for both. “The Covenant marks the furtherest point yet reached in our progress towards a co-operative human society. That is its greatness; that is also its weakness. But there is no going back. The light once seen should never sink below our human horizon again. That would be a betrayal of those who died in the Great War, a sacrifice of the generations yet unborn. That would be an unthinkable surrender. It is true that there have been some defections, failures, losses. Let us admit all that. But, in membership, the League still remains a formidable army able to do battle against militarism and reaction. When these have run their course and done their worst, many will return in chastened mood to their vacant, places at the round table of the League.’’ The Decline of Oratory. “The repute of oratory has of late, fallen upon evil days, though it might have been supposed that it would be the more held in honour as the scope for its exercise widened with the advent of democracy,” says the “Times Literary Supplement.” “But perhaps that is the very reason for the decline: a great popular audience, who believe themselves to be simple men, instinctively take up an attitude of resistance to the art of persuasion which they believe to be an art of deceit. The vogue of the strong still man has left behind it the lingering presumption that high skill in the use of the spoken word is prima facie evidence of shallowness of emotion or insincerity of thought. Tt was not so in the century of Pitt and Burke. An aristocratic audience in Lords or Commons, raised by its own sense of rank and culture above the suspicion that it might be made craftily the victim of its own emotions, appeared to delight in the conscious art of its great orators, and to accept, what is surely the truer view, that profundity of feeling naturally expresses itself in sublimity of language."

Plain Health.

Lord Herder, in a recent conference at Bath, gave a list of what he termed the “Amenities of Life.” He said: “Health is not a mere absence of disease. There is a positive quality about health which is capable of almost indefinite extension. Here spas can help enormously, for it is at these places that the amenities can best be preserved in the interest of the nation. What do I mean by the amenities? - I mean clean air to breathe; close contact with the earth and sky and sun; the sight of beautiful things, and the hearing of beautiful sounds; quiet; and leisure to enjoy all these. The spas can be reorientated in the direction of resorts for raising the level of fitness in those who are free from disease; in this way they may find a new, and an extremely useful function. Success along such a line means co-oper-ation among municipalities, hotel proprietors, and doctors. “The Rich Old Tree of China.”

“What the Yangtze and Shanghai are to Central China, Canton and the Si-kiang are to the south,” asserts the “Manchester Guardian”; “and the intricate delta at Canton, where the Sikiang mingles with three other rivers and flows out into the Pacific, is one of the most important commercial areas in the world. But now the Japanese, those greedy pupils of Imperial masters, have come to Canton. Already their warships control the delta and they have followed our example by seizing some small islands strategically useful and only the property of the Chinese. They will not, presumably, attack Hong-Kong, for that would mean war and is not even necessary; they can take Canton and cut oft HongKong from all trade with it. Japan has yet to force a landing, but the moral is plain for the Western Powers. Japan will never be content to shake the rich old tree of China to allow he r rivals to keep the fruit which falls. She is determined, to exploit China herself, not to float a joint-stock company.” The Way to Happiness.

“The prime secret of happiness is in a fullness of life composed of noble qualities, the reigning law of which is harmony and peace. It comes to every man, however humble his station and environment, in whose spirit love ministers; and it is a stranger to every man, no matter how luxuriously attended, to whose spirit love is unknown as a controlling and Inspiring influence. The things we must see to, and cherish, before we can know happiness are the principles underlying all our life-efforts, the habits of our affections and desires, the states of our mind. Happiness does not consist iu the acquisition of material good alone, or the attainment to some conspicuous office, but rather in an inner harmony of spirit which is ever finding expression in gladsome life and loving efforts for others. Each new year is full of the best things possible for us, if we but will it so. Life is a series of ascending climaxes, and because it waxes ever richer for every man, whether young or old, it is better further on. In confidence we can bid each other “A happy new year.’”—A.H.M.S. in “The Inquirer.”

School and the World. “We have to remember that at school memories are trained and facts put into your minds which have then to be developed,” said Lord Leverhulme at a recent prize-giving in England. “Your minds become rather like two parts of a factory—the warehouse where things are stored and the works where things are made as the result of thinking. A certain amount of work at school must be looked upon as rather like Swedish drill, apparently not of much use in itself, but which serves to train the body to be graceful, supple, strong and healthy. When boys grow older and go out into the world it is easier to fill the warehouse of the mind than it is to rebuild the threshold of the mind if it has not been properly constructed at the beginning. You also acquire your taste for hobbies and interests, among the foremost the taste for literature. Into whatever profession or calling you go on leaving school, you will have to communicate your thoughts to other people, either in speech or writing. Therefore the ability to speak or.write good .clear, simple English will be of the greatest value. In order to acquire that ability I recommend every boy to have as companions a dozen interesting books of good literary style. With these you will .be enabled to acquire a good literary style which will be of great value to you in after life.”

No Mean Fighters. “There are certain facts on the march in the Far East which we dare not smother with soothing syrup,” said General Sir lan Hamilton, addressing a Christmas party given by the British Legion at the Services Rendered Club, Wandsworth." “It is being put about that Japanese Army efficiency is all founded on her easy defeat of the effete Empire of Russia. Do not, I beg of you, think their forces are composed of bogie men who would curl up on contact with a European fleet, army or air force. I’ll tell you boys from St. Dunstan’s and Roehampton, who know the difference between bullets and words, exactly how high you can rate the Japanese fighters without saying anything to offend anyone. If a Japanese division were to be fairly launched against a line held by French, German, or British divisions, nothing short of a loss of 50 per cent, would stop them.”

Another Blizzard? “No factor has been discovered which would give reasonable ground for anticipating a very sharp depression. A slump of the magnitude of 1930-31 would add over 700,000 a year to the register of unemployment, or nearly 2,000.000 in all. There are two reasons why no figures of this sort are to be anticipated. The first is that in the earlier period the total number of insured persons, employed and unemployed together, wag rising by from 300,000 to 400.000 a year, so that unemployment would have increased by these amounts even without any reduction in employment. In the next few years the increase will be only something of the order of 100,000 a year—indeed, it may be less, as there is a substantial volume of delayed retirements from industry to be worked off. Secondly, even apart from the operation of this mathematical factor, no such economic blizzard as burst upon the world in 1929 can be foreseen.”—“The Economist."