OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 278, 20 August 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

No Challenge On Minor Tilings. “Though Britain must be prepared to meet the last arbitrament if forced upon us,” writes Mr. J. L. Garvin, in the “Observer,” “this nation of all societies and this Empire of all systems would be stark mad to provoke it. We must not challenge it on minor and momentary things, however irritating. The issue on which we stake the existence of the nation and the Empire for ever must be commensurable with the immensity of that irrevocable engagement. It must be an issue vital and fateful; clear beyond the possibility of mistake; approved as in the former conflict by the general opinion of the world. For these purposes of averting the appalling calamity of civilisation if we may, and of waging the greatest of all our struggles to the end if we must, with unconquerable endurance and resolve, the Government and the nation require a sleepless sagacity and an iron restraint. Whether for peace or war every single day’s respite that is gained by the deliberate statesmanship of postponement in the hope of prevention is wise, and inestimably wise.”

The Elections in Eire. The “Irish Independent,” which criticised Mr. de Valera’s Government, says:—“Fianna Fail returns to power, as the results show, with: an adequate working majority, a bigger majority than it has had at any previous election. In common with the people, we, of course, accept this verdict. A point stressed by the Fianna Fail leader was that such a majority ,was required in order to guarantee the nation stable government and a period of prosperity. There is much leeway Ito be made up, and no time should be lost in tackling the task. The economic war has been ended, but its effects on the prosperity of the country have not been removed. Unless the recovery of 'the agricultural industry is hastened other industries and trade cannot be expected to thrive. Having put its trust in Fianna Fail, the country looks forward to the Government for delivery of the goods.” A Protest Against Protests.

‘•‘The ships bombed were acting lawfully in pursuit of their trade. They had on board only such goods as they ■were entitled to carry under the orders given to them by the British Government. The attacks made were not accidental, but deliberate, and even after the ships were holed the insurgent airplanes machine-gunned them with the object of killing or disabling the crew. Some 57 ships have been attacked, and several British subjects have been killed. It is admitted by the Prime Minister that the attacks were illegal—that, in fact, the British subjects killed were murdered. Yet the Prime Minister declines to take any action, economic or military, to protect British lives and property. Ido not recall any Incident in British history at all comparable. I do not believe that any 1 other British Minister has ever made a speech like that of Mr. Chamberlain. It seems to me inconsistent with Brii tish honour and international morality.”—Viscount Cecil, in a letter to the Government Whip, Lord Lucan. ) Net So Easy.

“The issue is highly complex and cannot be simplified,” asserts the “Spectator.” “Two parties in Spain are at war. The aim of one party Is to reduce the other by cutting off its supplies of all kinds. With that end in view, ports where supplies are being lauded are bombed from the air, and any ships lying in the port are liable to ■be hit. That is a situation that has to be accepted; the Opposition does not claim that a British ship should confer immunity on a Spanish port by simply lying in the harbour, and the British Government has warned captains that they enter Spanish territorial waters at their own risk. Those considerations cover the majority of cases of damage to British ships, but there is a minority of cases, clearly established, in which the attacks have been deliberate, notably at Gandia. Short of measures which would involve intervention in the war, it is hard to see what effective steps can be taken.”

A Tradition at Stake. “Our tradition for two hundred and fifty years has been that Great Britain joust defend the smaller nations against the greater ones. It has been that Great Britain must always conduct her foreign policy on certain moral principles. If you subordinate principles to selfish considerations you .will never get unity in this country or In the Empire, or the sympathy of the United States. You will never get this country to fight except for an ideal. If you diminish the potency of your jnoral authority by purchasing a mojnentary appeasement at the price of peace you are'never going to succeed. grievances the Sudeten Germans may have, they cannot reasonably expect to be placed in a position of domination in a State in which they are a minority, and equally any settlement that British opinion would approve must be based on their continued Royalty to that State.”—“The Scotsman.” {This Mad Futility.

“This country alone has had imposed upon it the expenditure of 1500 to 2000 million pounds in the next few years on armaments. Some European nations are even more heavily burdened. Consider for a moment in terms of material educational and hygienic progress what might have been done for the peoples with such funds. What a handicap that imposition is to" the attainment of an ampler and fuller life, both mental and material,‘for the populations of our different countries! ■What is this world, we might . ask, which scientists and engineers are being set to create for the future? In Its most advanced phase it can be defined as a world with an order of society planned for the utter destruction of civilisation. Let there bt no illusion as to the magnitude and scope of what is called modern rearmament. On the part of the Great Powers it is clearly becoming in an ever-incieasing degree a consecration and concentration of all national activity on this deplorable objective. It is hard to be lieve that in cold blood such a futility is to be accepted by rational communi ties. As a permanent situation it is incredible because, if war does not transpire, through obvious strength being matched with equally obvious strength, what then?—Lord Weir, in an address to a congress of engineers.

The Fate of Democracy. “The fate of democracy,” says Mr. Harold Macmillan, M.P. (Conservative), in his final chapter, “is linked up with the problem of economic progress. It is in greater danger from internal decay than from external attack. Like any other political or economic system, democracy can live only so long as it is able to cope satisfactorily with the problems of social life. While it is able to deal with these problems, and to secure for its people the satisfaction of their reasonable demands, it will retain the vigorous support sufficient for its defence. Without tolerance there is no freedom. In the absence of freedom every form of cultural progress is stultified, distorted, and destroyed. The defence of demoracy is not merely for ’the preservation of political liberty; it is for the preservation of the conditions of freedom in which alone the highly individualistic efforts of men in the intellectual and cultural sphere are made possible. There is thus a relationship not only between economic progress and the defence of democracy, but between the preservation of democracy and the possibilities of progress in every branch of science, art, and learning. Democracy is being revealed as much more than a political system; it is a way of life.”

A Philosophy of Life. “Culture, as I understand it, is essentially a product of leisure. The art of culture is therefore essentially the art of loafing. From the Chinese point of view the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured man. For there seems to be a philosophic contradiction between being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise. The wisest man is therefore he who loafs most gracefully. Many wise men know that the desires for success, fame and wealth are euphemistic names for the fears of failure, poverty and obscurity, and that these fears dominate our lives. Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture. A good reader turns an author inside out, like a beggar turning his coat inside out in search of fleas. Some authors provoke their readers constantly and pleasantly like a beggar’s coat full of fleas. An itch is a great thing. A. good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.”—Lin Yurang, a Chinese author, in “The Importance of Living.”

Candour in Conversation. “Faithful are the wounds of such a frien’d. I am not converted to a belief in complete candour in conversation, except as that candour is controlled by consideration and gentleness and good humour. Given these things, we cannot have too much of frankness; without them our homes and our streets would become battlefields of recriminations. And should we really know ourselves better? You will agree that much is lost through a foolish desire to save the feelings of others. I had a friend, the editor of a great paper, who said that he would never have a regular contributor who was not his personal friend. What he meant was perfectly simple —if a writer was his friend, he could tell him exactly what he thought about his contribution. A friend would not take offence if he heard plain language, and so the editor would get the best out of the writer, and the writer would have the very great gain of the editor’s judgment and experience. The cardinal word in this case was ‘friend.’ Perhaps that is a clue to the problem. No limits to candour between friends.” —“Quintus Quiz,” in the “Christian Century,”

Blind Dogmatism. “I have spoken with a scientist who declared that belief in God was absurd, but who admitted that for fourteen years he had not attended church, and for ten years he had not read the Bible. Had I accused him of speaking dogmatically in his own sphere after studying the evidence for only one side, he would .have been justly indignant. In his own sphere he was open-minded, cautious and impartial. Nevertheless, in the matter of religion, he had deliberately shut himself off from those sources where he might reasonably expect to hear the evidence for the other side, yet he believed himself here also to be an unbiased observer. To quote the experience of Francis Thompson:— “ ‘The angels keep their ancient places; Turn, but a stone, and start a wing! ’Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces That miss the many-splendoured thing’.”

—Dr. Edgar P. Dickie. Professor of Divinity at Aberdeen University, in this year's Kerr lecture.

Children And Sleep.

“A factor of paramount importance in the race for physicial fitness is the necessity for a sufficiency of sleep and rest,” says Miss L. Lowe, president of the National Association of Head Teachers. “It is self-evident that the children of to-day are not getting enough rest to keep them well and strong. This lack of sleep is not confined to children of any one class, or any particular type of school, but is generally widespread. It is responsible for much of the lack of vitality, and is the cause of many serious affections and of the mental instability with which we are so familiar in our pupils. The solution of this problem of insufficient rest is in the bands of the parents—they are the guardians of their children's good, and we believe that, as they realise that the health of their children is seriously impaired by loss of sleep, and that their educational progress is handicapped, they will take the necessary steps to secure a maximum of sleep and rest for them.” Honour and Policy.

“I found in a book of German verse to-day a few lines by Theodor Storm which struck me as particularly apposite to the correspondence on ‘Honour and Policy.’ They were as follows: — “ ‘Der Eine fragt: Was kommt danaeh? Der Andre fragt: Ist es recht? Und also unterseheidet slch Der freie von dem Knecht.’ This may be translated as:— • ‘One man asks: Is it expedient? The other only: Is it right? And so reveals the gulf between The free man and the serf.’” —Leeds Six in the "Yorkshire Post."