OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 72, 17 December 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Support for Mr. Chamberlain.

“Public opinion,” asserts the “Scotsman, “will support the Prime Minister in every effort he may make to solve our international difficulties by peace-

ful agreement In order, however, that peaceful persuasion may prove effective, we must be able in the lust resort to prove, by our own preparedness to fight, that aggression will not pay. The nation has been stirred to a pitch of resolution that has been strangely absent, from our national life since the exhausting days of 19141918. In this mood the electorate would give the Government a mandate for the strongest possible measures of rearmament, and would submit to sacrifices that even a few mouths ago would have been rejected ns totally uncalled for.” Spelling and Punctuation.

The Archbishop of York, Dr. Temple, thinks correct punctuation more important, intellectually, than correct spelling. ‘‘ln writing essays.” said Dr. iTemple, 'in an address to schoolchildren, “there are two things one lias difficulty with, spelling and stops. Nearly everybody says it is the spelling that matters. Now spelling is one of the decencies of life, but intellectually it does not matter. Shakespeare spelt his own name at least four different ways. Intellectually, stops matter a great deal. If you are getting your commas, semicolons and full stops wrong, it means that you are not getting your thoughts right, and your mind is muddled.” Those Old Teachers.

“Our schools would be /inestimably poorer without those precious souls whose characters predominate over time-tables, whose experience of the world and of books is unconsciously absorbed by pupils who sometimes make the ungrateful comment in later life—‘l never learned a thing from old So-find-So.’ Strange, is it not. that in spite of this verdict, ‘old So-and-So’ is often the teacher we remember longest and with the deepest affection.” writes a former pupil in the "Glasgow Herald.” ‘‘Those old teachers bad the happy knack of passing on the essence of their wisdom in the sphere of life as well as of books.” Tlie Theatre Trounced. “I find that the majority of people interested in the theatre,” said Dame Sybil Thorndike, in a speech reported in the “Birmingham Post,” “belong to a past. age. The ordinary person who goes to the theatre does so expecting to enjoy it. more or less, after a big meal. The theatre-going public may. be divided into those who look upon it as dessert and those who go more or less fasting. You will find that it is the cheaper public that generally goes fasting and is far more alive and responsive. There are outbreaks in London and all over the country, on the amateur side, from people who are not. satisfied and want something more quickening in the theatre. The type of thought we get in the theatre is twenty, thirty or forty years behind what any of us people are thinking. Anything that, yon or I are thinking about seriously cannot possibly be represented on the stage.” “We Can Catch Up.” “That we can catch tip is beyond doubt. IVe are the far richer nation: we are not straining ourselves to equip an army of millions: and we still have the advantage Which Germany has now used up, of a considerable unused capacity of men and materials'. ’ This last factor may prove decisive. Dor though the Nazis can now produce no more guns without entrenching on their supplies of butter, we still have men and capital standing idle that could produce wealth to the value of at least. £5OO millions a year. Our problem is to organise these riches for war. and in doing so we shall have to breed the same forgetfulness of any other object, the same disregard of vested interests, the same willingness to abandon cherished notions, as would bo evoked by war itself. It is a bitter tragedy. No high-sounding wordscan lessen this feeling of futility and frustration, of anger and disillusionment. But if the balance sheet of war itself has some items on the credit side—courage and service and comrade-hip and the demonstration that liberty is not' weakness—then we may hope that the war-without-fighting on which we now seem doomed' to enter may also bring some gain to offset its cruel waste.”—The “Economist.” Agree With Thine Adversary.

“Why, after all, should ' the world have heen ‘staggered’ at the spectacle of a Prime Minister dealing directly, and face to face, with ;} prospective foe? Apart from all controversy as to the final consequences of such an act, the thing itself was right in principle. Religious people, at least, could hardly avoid recalling the words of our Lord. ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him, iest —.’ It is the application to international situations of what is frequently done in courts of justice, when litigants are advised by the judge to retire and try to reach a peaceable settlement. It has to be done when a war is ended, but then the mischief lias been wrought. Can anything be saner than to cut through the red. tape of traditional diplomatic procedure and release men for human contacts?”—“F.C.S.” in I he “Birmingham Post.” A War Between Pairs. “Until the conference of Munich," observes the “Economist,’’ "it was always reasonable to assume that war, if it came, would be a war of the world against the aggressors. That, is not so now. We have now to contemplate the possibility of a war in which Britain and France would alone have to face Germany and Italy. Save for Portugal. Egypt and Iraq, there are no countries in the world which are pledged to be with us from the start. This is an entirely new position in Which we and the French find ourselves —the most dangerous that either country has had to face in half a century. This particular war may never come; diplomacy may succeed in rallying allies to us. lint it is the realiz.alion that this war of two agaiu-l two has to be envisaged as a possibility that accounts for the new urgency of rearmament.’'

When Propaganda Comes.

"I have the feeling that force of circumstances will compel us in the not distant future to face the question of propaganda squarely and honestly, writes Mr. Sidney Rogerson, in "Propaganda in the Next M ar.” "M ben that day comes we shall act as we have never failed to do in the past and carry through a minor revolution over-night without anyone losing his sleep. Having made a fundamental change, we shall proceed as if nothing bad happened. Within the last ten years we have changed a form of party government that had stood for two hundred years, abandoned in the same night a fiscal policy which had become traditional. jettisoned the gold standard which was our pride, and consented to the abdication of a king. So when we agree that propaganda control is necessary, we shall impose it instantly, and label our control machinery ‘democratic - or ‘voluntary’ in large letters.” The Wisdom of the Past. “In every other department of know- . ledge we learn from others, though the facts are there for all to discover if they can,” writes the Rev. F. A. Farley, M.A., D.D., in "The Faith?’ "We try to understand and interpret the things of which we become aware in the physical world, but most of this understanding we derive from scientists. It has not come to us at first hand. And even the scientists of today are indebted to those from whom they themselves have learnt. Had they refused the help of others they would have spent their time and strength in re-discovering ' what had already been discovered. Progress has only been made because scientists were willing to learn from their predecessors before they ventured out into new paths. They would till have remained comparatively elementary scientists if they bad refused to learn from others: and in the larger realm of the knowledge of God we shall remain more imperfect than we need do if we dispense with the help which can come to us from the men of spiritual insight in the past as well as in the present.”

k, The Staggering Cost of Defence.

“It is one thing to deplore this madness of armament, and auother'not to be dismayed by it. What, then is the essential perspective of this problem? We contemplate spending a sum in excess of £1.500.000.000 during the next few years, of which part is to be borrowed. First compare this against our war-time expenditure from 1914-19, which amounted to no less than £ll,250.000.000: in short, we shall now spend, we may reasonably hope, only a fraction of that earlier sum. Again, compare our contemplated expenditure against the realities of our national income. Between 1934, our last pre-re-armament year, and, the present, day, ou.' national income has increased by about £1,000.000.000; in brief, so long as war does not actually break out, ■we are unlikely to spend anywhere near the whole of this increase in a single year. I do not overlook the bearing of our entering upon the downward slope of the trade cycle in this connexion, but there are good grounds for believing that the recession may be moderate, and certainly not. anything like as severe as in 1931-32.” —Sir Harold Bellman, in “Capital, Confidence. and the Community.” A Testimony to Human Folly.

"Expenditure on armaments is a standing testimony to the folly and moral impotence of mankind,” points out the “.Spectator,” "but it can at least be claimed that defensive armaments—-anti-aircraft, guns and fighter ’planes and balloon barrages—and effective shelter for the civil population fall less under that condemnation than any others. Those armaments and that shelter we must have; we ought to have had them long ago; but the essentia] is not to harp on that, but to get them now. If Germans ask. as they are asking, why we want them, the answer is plain—because we may be attacked by Germany. There is danger to our soil from no other country, and if once we can be convinced, by the adoption and proved execution of an equitable disarmament, plan, that the danger from Germany has disappeared, we can with intense relief divert our resources to enterprises befitting rational men.” The Threat to Christianity.

"Perhaps the strongest threat to Christianity comes from totalitarianism in all its forms. It cannot honestly be denied that Nazism in Germany, Communism in Russia, and Fascism in Italy, have conferred a g»- q many benefits on their respective countries. But these benefits are bought at a heavy price. Apart from the State, the individual has no value. The race, the. nation, the party, stand supreme, demanding and receiving complete surrender. This is fundamentally at issue with Christianity, which holds that human personality has value in itself. There can be no compromise or conciliation between totalitarianism and true Christianity, for they tire at bottom opposed. Christianity has to face a struggle over a wider field and of severer intensity than any, perhaps, it has yet known. Bound up with it is the hope of democracy. To conceal these truths is to mislead. Materialism, in the decay of Christianity, lias taken a strong hold upon many in all classes, and the materialist has no use for the freedom of other people.”— Sir Cyril Norwood, in a presidential address io the Modern Church men’s Conference in England. Leadership For Humanity. "Does the new hope for appeasement in Europe increase or decrease the insistence of the world’s call to the church to give a lead in practical unity and fellowshii>? It increases it a thousandfold. It changes that call for leadership to a positive demand that the church shall set an example of spirit-produced and spirit-maintained fellowship to civilization which is itself about to make a supreme and possibly last attempt to achieve just this very thing. If the church fails to respond Io the call now, not only does she almost hopelessly jeopardise the chances of saving all that is best in European civilization, she also stands before the world as quite obviously a lost leader."—The Very Rev. F. 11. Williams. Dean of .Manchester.