OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Phrases That Stick. “Famous men may be remembered for great achievements and eloquent speeches. They are, perhaps, still more remembered for hasty words that damage their reputation,” says a writer in the “Birmingham Post.” The late Lord Salisbury was never allowed to forget that he spoke of the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons as 'a black man.’ Augustine Birrell could never shake off his unfortunate declaration, ‘minorities must suffer.’ It was an unhappy slip for a man who had shown what wit and wisdom can flow forth from the pen of a ready writer. Lord Haldane was only expressing his indebtedness to the giants of philosophy when he said, ‘Germany is my spiritual home,’ but he said it when war passions were at their height; readers of the popular papers knew nothing of Kant and Hegel and charged the great lawyer and statesman with treachery. It was a noble indiscretion, but it was above the heads of the people and was counted unpardonable. Mr. Asquith’s ‘wait and see,’ a casual reply in the House of Commons intended only to tease the Opposition on a matter of purely domestic politics, was Used most unscrupulously to disparage and belittle him when, later, he was carrying the heavy responsibilities of Government in the first year of the war.”

Scottish Bracken and a Moral. “The bracken which encroaches on hill pastures, especially in Central Scotland, is a symbol of the state we have come to. People sometimes wonder how our ancestors managed to deal with bracken: the answer is that they were not troubled with bracken, because they kept cattle on the hillsides instead. They had a positive policy—to rear cattle: our policy at best is negative, to keep down the bracken. It is because we do not cultivate and makp full use of our land that the bracken makes use of it for us. So long as we have merely negative ideas in our heads, we shall get merely negative results. This is true of Scottish life in other directions: it is true of the contrast between hundreds of thousands of men wanting work and a great amount of work needing to be done; it is true of our religious life, which is still occupied with ‘Thou shalt not.' The bracken spreading over our hillsides is a sign that we have not the courage or imagination to stand up and live.”—Mr. Alexander Maclehose, in his book, “The Scotland of Our Sons.”

Manufacturing in the Dominions. “In broadening their economic basis the Dominions are adding to their strength, and we want to see them strong and, moreover, even if they presently begin to supply from their own resources some of the things which they have hitherto bought from us, we may be quite sure that, with the increased prosperity that would bring, new needs would arise, needs which they cannot satisfy themselves and for the satisfaction of Which they will look to the United Kingdom. As these secondary industries develop there will be new outlets for labour,- and, alalthough I do not myself anticipate that we shall ever see again emigration upon the scale which it reached before the war, I do see that as the industrial development of the Dominions proceeds there must arise a new demand for workers, and new opportunities will come‘for the people of this country to find In these newer lands perhaps greater scope for their talents than they could in our own old crowded country.”—The British Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain. Singapore.

“No admiral in his senses would undertake an attack on Australia if he knew that at Singapore, on his flank, there was a powerful British fleet. Singapore, seventh seaport of the world, is now also the strongest naval base. It hag the only graving dock for British warships in the Far East. The dock is capable of taking a battleship of 50,000 tons. In addition, there is an air base and powerful land fortifications. It is believed that storage, for more than a million tons of fuel oil is provided. Naturally, this gigantic imperial project has not been accomplished at a small cost. The base itself has £9,000,000 'When the expenditure on ancillary works is taken into account, the total cost of the great sea fortress will probably be well over £20,000,000. The engineering problems which demanded solution make a most romantie chapter. Swamps and rubber plantations have been, by determination and ingenuity, converted into docks, dry land, roads, railway sidings and so forth. Thirty miles of piles have been driven through mud to solid strata. Hills have been moved—six million cubic yards of them.” —London “Evening Standard.” Christian Doctrine.

“This Report does make enormously for unity,” says the “Church Times” on the Archbishop’s Commission. Report on Doctrine, “and does so in a manner that is both liberal and legitimate. We conceive that it is going to be intensely difficult for a Modernist, who is not irreconcilably negative and hostile in his outlook, not to accept the kind of explanation of traditional theology that is set forth in the Report. Those who are Christians indeed, but find an intellectual difficulty simply ■ in the ancient forms and phrases, will have controversial standing largely cut away from under them. If we are right in our estimate, this is a consequence of supreme moment. It aptly illustrates the immense contribution made by the Report, and that not in one direction only, to mutual undersanding and to mutual conciliation. The Church is shown to be far more united in theological substance than men dared hope ten years ago. And the Church will find in the Report a powerful lever for promoting yet further and yet deeper unity. What applies domestically, apples also, in corresponding measure, externally. The Commission has once and for all made it plain that the Church of England possesses a theological mind and a true sense of theological proportion; that it is concerned primarily with the ddctrine of God and grace, and only secondarily with the doctrine of sacraments and means of grace. That being so, it cannot but be harder for orthodox Dissenters, whose separation from the Church is merely traditional, to close their ears to the urgency of the question, whether, in the face of explanations so reasonable and balanced, and so deeply religious, there is any substantial ground for continued Dissent”

A Report on Doctrine. “Whether the Virgin Birth of our Lord is fact or myth, whether or not His tomb was empty on Easter Day, whether the Gospel miracles should be taken as history or imagery are among the questions which the commission, owing to the conflict of opinion among its members, found itself unable to answer,” says the London “Times” in comment on the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Doctrine, published recently. “All it could do was to record impartially that these differences persisted. In these circumstances the unanimity with which the report was signed ceases to be quite so impressive. ‘Significant and important’ are the adjectives applied by the introduction to the ‘agreed statement’ of the commission about the ministry. It may be with some surprise, therefore, that the reader will learn from the report itself that ‘on the larger question concerning the validity, in the sense defined, of sacraments performed by ministers . who have not received their commission in the historical succession of the episcopate, there is divergence of opinion among us.’ This sentence—which, in plain English, means: ‘we cannot agree whether the sacraments of nonepiscopal Churches are valid’ illustrates a weakness of the report which is found too often in such documents.” Theatre V. Cinema.

“I have no doubt you are expecting me to tell you whether the theatre has a future. Well, I don’t know. I only know that I would rather go to the films than to plays, because they are more exciting, the seats are more comfortable, you can hear what is said, they are finished quicker, and if a film director has a story to tell in one hour and eleven minutes he does not pad it out to last two hours. Although I have wept my eyes out at some films, I have forgotten all about them before I have recovered my hat,' but if the theatre is good I remember every piece of firstclass acting for ever. Fifteen years ago' a White Paper issued by the Government showed that 1050 millions attended the cinemas during one year. It has to be remembered that since then the number of cinemas must have quadrupled. The theatre is being killed largely because the owners of cheap and popular newspapers give two whole pages to ridiculous advertisements and news about some film actresses who, by some mischance, use tl.eir own teeth .. . while to a play like ‘Mouring Becomes Electra they give only a few inches.” —Mr. James Agate, the well-knowm dramatic critic, in a speech reported in the “Glasgow Herald.”

Tranquillity of Mind, . "Every individual as he goes through life has different problems, and reacts differently to the same circumstances. Different individuals see and feel the same things in different ways, something in them colours the world and their lives. Their experiences and their lessons will be different in each individual case. The more the world speeds up, the more it seems to me necessary that we should learn to pick out of the past the things that, we feel were important and beautiful then. One of these things was a quality of tranquillity in people which you rarely meet to-day. Perhaps one must have certain periods of life lived in more or less tranquil surroundings in order to attain that particular quality. I read not long ago in David Drayson’s ‘The Countryman’s Year’ these words: ‘Back of Tranquillity lies always conquered unhappiness.’ That may be so, but perhaps these grandparents of ours found it a little easier to conquer unhappiness because their lives were not lived at' high tension so constantly. All of us must conquer some unhappiness in our lives. ' Why not try occasionally what a little does of quiet nature with a day in and day out routine of necessary ordinary things to do, close to the realities of life, will do for us?”—Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.

National Sovereignty. “I think we are all agreed that national sovereignty, which grew up by 1914 to be a menace, is obsolete, because it means anarchy and can mean nothing else. The idea of national sovereignty is that each State has absolute authority, and absolute authority is incompatible with the well-being of the world now. If it is incompatible will the well-being of the world, it is incompatible with the well-being of each individual State. That is a fact which, I think, is often forgotten. If national sovereignty is to be retained, then war is necessarily at the back of every discussion. The nations round a table at Geneva will be like people who sit down in committee with loaded revolvers. If that is at the back of discussion, then discussion is conducted in an atmosphere of fear. If there is an atmosphere of fear there is necessarily insecurity, and where there is insecurity there cannot be freedom.”— Mr. W. Hamilton Fyfe, LL.D., Principal of Aberdeen University, at the conclusion of the Congress in Glasgow of the British Universities League of Nations .Society.

Knowledge. “Knowledge, always has to be in a certain sense forgotten before it can re-emerge in a livingly creative form. We first acquire laboriously some new cabability, mental or physical, and only when its practice has become largely instinctive are we really its master. Then we have it, as the phrase goes, ‘at our finger-tips,’ and can exercise it fluently, with very little conscious effort. A truly cultured man must have his culture at his fingertips, so to speak; it must not be relegated merely to a compartment of his brain, but must lend a. gracious richness to all his doings. The mistrust of book learning prevalent among craftsmen, and other persons who have become skilful in some field of activity by patient practice, arises largely from a feeling that such learning often stays in the mind and fails to reach the fingers. There are persons without book learning who in a narrower sense are cultured; they are sure of themselves in all matters relating to their daily work and have made their performance of it a satisfying art. We ought, nevertheless, to keep a distinction between this kind of culture and the culture of the mind.’only remembering that mental culture will remain largely sterile unless it finds a channel of expression to enrich the personal relations of daily life.” —The “Yorkshire Post*”-