OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 94, 14 January 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Pigeon-holing Christianity. “It Ims hitherto been the habit to keep religion strictly apart from polities and economics. It' it be true that the spiritual and moral forces are more important than the material forces, that attitude must be abandoned. To what extent the churches should take part in political and' economic activities is open to discussion, but I do not think it is open to discussion that, unless Christianity can bring its influence to bear ou these social and economic problems, it will be bad both for the world and the Christian Church. These problems are vaster and more complex than those which were familiar to Jesus and His disciples, but their essential characteristics are the same. We have still our pharisees and scribes and the rich who disregard their responsibilities. We only lack the courage and indignation with which to denounce evil, and the faith to kindle loie and hope. If nations are to recover health and vigour, they must be purified as with fire.” Here Are Trade Facts.

“I think that those who speak continually of the value of the Central European group of markets —Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia—sometimes forget the very great value of the German and Italian markets themselves. During 1937 we imported from Germany—including Austria—and Italy, £47,000,000 worth of merchandise. We exported, including re-exports as well as our own produce, over £37,000,000 worth of goods. From the group of countries which I mentioned, during the same period the comparable figures were £13,000,000 of imports and £7,000,000 of exports so that, from the total of that group, the amount of our trade, important as it is, is very much less than with the two great countries mentioned. I emphasize the figures of £47,000,000 and £37,000,000 as compared with £13,000,000 and £7,000,000 for the whole group of countries. If we take Czechoslovakia into account in 1937 our imports from that country were £7,000,000, and our exports, including re-exports, £3,000,000. If we take the whole group, including Czechoslovakia, we get a total of £20,000,000 of imports and £10,000,000 of exports.”—Mr. Colville, Secretary of State for Scotland, in a speech in the House of Commons. A Singular Stock-in-Trade. “We are a tolerant people,” says the “Spectator,” “and the violence of the German Press and the bellicose rhetoric of speakers like Field-Marshal Goering, Dr. Goebbels, and Herr Hitler himself, are commonly accepted as part of the singular stock-in-trade of the Nazi Party. But the new campaign against British public men is hardly to be placed in that category. There is an accepted Nazi technique in such matters. Internally you launch a campaign against a certain class, e.g., the Jews, and then destroy them. Externally, e.g., in regard to Czechoslovakia and Dr. Benes, it is precisely the same. And it is certainly no accident that in Herr Hitler’s speech at Weimar Mr. Churchill and Mr. Arthur Greenwood were attacked specifically, in Herr von Ribbentrop’s on Tuesday ‘war agitators’ were assailed generically, and in Herr Hitler’s further address at Munich on Tuesday Mr. Eden, Mr. Duff Cooper and Mr. Attlee joined Mr. Churchill on the black-list. This is, no doubt, another example of the usual German incapacity to understand national psychology, the assumption presumably being that British electors will withdraw their suffrages, from men whose accession to power would irritate Herr Hitler.” The Unimportant Man. Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, commences a sermon with the title “The Unimportant Man,” with the remark: “What would I say in this sermon—should it be my last? Should I say all that is in my mind, it might, indeed, be my last! That doctor from the Eastern Counties who stated on a postcard that he wished to see me murdered, like Thomas a Becket, before the High Altar in Canterbury Cathedral, might then realize his wish. For With my last breath I should still demand, as a Christian obligation of supreme importance, that very thing which had so intensely vexed him, and, indeed, had vexed many persons more important than he, namely, a square deal for the Tittle, man, the ‘unimportant’ man. A square deal for the men who deliver me milk at six, letters at seven, a tramway ticket at eight, and types my letters at nine; the man in the country lane who says ‘stop me and buy one,’ or the other man who waves me on from the cab of his lorry and sits afterwards in the roadside shack and drinks penny cups of ten. That these men, the coal-miner, the millworker, and thousands like them, in all sorts of obscure and unimportant jobs, should have a square deal would be my last demand. I would demand a square deal, too, for his wife, son and daughter.” A Hedgehog Analogy. ' “Herr Hitler made a good-humoured comparison of his own country to a hedgehog,” said the Marquess of Crewe in the House of Lords. He said, quite accurately, that the hedgehog is a pacific animal, that it is able to defend itself by its formidable armament of spines, and that if it did not possess them it would become the prey of predatory animals such as foxes and polecats, who would see before long that the race of hedgehogs became extinct: But when you attempt to apply the analogy to international affairs, it seems to be somewhat different. Each highly-armed country declares itself to be an authentic hedgehog and nothing else, but all the time it has in its mind the feeling that some of the other hedgehogs in its immediate neighbourhood possess the magical faculty of. at short notice, turning themselves into polecats and therefore that they have to l>e regarded with suspicion and a safe distance has to be kept from them. So long as that belief exists, there is no hope that, what everybody would like to see will happen—namely, that the spines of the hedgehog, from disuse, should diminish in number and finally fall off. and a system of general disarmament should grow up."

Pacificism on the Spot. “Pacifism either has stopped Europe at the brink of the abyss, or else it Ims only made the abyss more terrible ami inescapable by opening up Germany’s path to the east, embittering the hearts of the Czechs, alienating Russia and inflaming the self-confidence and enlarging the prestige of Hitler and Mussolini. Pacifism is on the spot because, having stopped, momentarily, the drift toward war. it will fail all the more miserably unless it can now reverse the tendencies of the last eight years and start the nations back toward peace. Here a tremendous responsibility rests upon the Christian'Church, which is certainly the heart of the pacifist movement. If after Munich things are just allowed to drift, we can easily see where the drift will take us: bigger armament races, new demands, highpressure propaganda, feverish alignments, ultimatums, war! Meanwhile, we have a breathing spell. How shall we use it?”—The “Christian Century.” Is Collaboration Possible?

“It is impossible to understand how anyone who is not either himself needlessly duped or is seeking to dupe others can talk seriously of producing European appeasement in confident collaboration with the convinced exponents of Nazi methods. Anti-Semitism and persecution of Catholics are not a mere exhibition of crude mediaevalism. Their purpose is to root out of the German people any . allegiance, not only political, but even spiritual and intellectual, other than that to the Fuehrer. Blind obedience in disregard of every other consideration, human or divine, is Herr Hitler's demand, because only so can he continue to impose the sacrifices needed for the emormous burden of German armaments, and only so can he make sure that in the last resort he can throw the whole people into a war for the fulfilment, not of their real needs, but of his own remorseless programme. To punish a helpless minority of 600.000 people for the act of an unbalanced youth is to outrage the name of justice.”—"Daily Mail.”

The Political Assassin. “The hand of the political assassin,” says the “Yorkshire Post,” “is not guided by reason or reflection. The motive is blind rage or blank despair, and for these, where they affect Jews, the Nazi 'regime itself is directly and criminally responsible. Its persecution has made maniacs or suicides of people, thousands of whose relatives died in the German and Austrian armies during the war as loyal soldiers of their countries. The orgy of licensed antiSemitic hooliganism which has now been launched against defenceless men, women and children is such as would disgrace a country of much less repute than Germany for civilization and order. In other countries whose free institutions it pleases Nazi propagandists to deride, such outrages would speedily have been repressed by an angry and disgusted people themeselves, even in the unthinkable event of the ordinary forces of law and order failing with sufficient promptitude to intervene.” “A Piece of Blackmail.”

“The policy of appeasement becomes in itself extraordinarily difficult —and much more difficult with the people of a peace-loving country as I believe ours to be—when we are confronted with such news as is in the newspapers today. I am sure that no right-think-ing man can have anything but a feeling or horror and detestation for the policy of brutal persecution which is being carried on in Germany at the present time. The last effrontery is the statement that if there is any hostile reaction to this treatment of the Jews in Germany in other countries, Germany may adopt a less merciful policy. That is a piece of blackmail, nothing more nor less. It is an attempt to close the mouths of . other countries who would wish to protest by a thinly-veiled promise that any such protest will lead to an intensification of the persecution. I cannot see the Jews in Germany have anything to lose by protests from other countries, and it is to be hoped that they have something to gain.”—Canon Thompson Elliott, Vicar of Leeds. Protest.

“I believe that I speak for the Christian people of this country in giving immediate expression to the feelings of indignation with which we have read of the deeds of cruelty and destruction which were perpetrated recently in Germany and Austria,” say s the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a letter to “The Times.” “Whatever provocation may have been given by the deplorable act of a single irresponsible Jewish youth, reprisals on such a scale, so fierce, cruel and vindictive, cannot possibly be justified. It is most distasteful to write these words just when there is in this country a general desire to be on friendly terms with the German nation. But there are times when the mere instincts of humanity make silence impossible. Would that the rulers of the Reich could realize that such excesses- of hatred and malice put upon the friendship which we are ready to offer them an almost intolerable strain!” Self-Expression.

“I get called on from time to time to act as as an adjudicator in competitions run by the British Drama League, and the more I see of that enterprise the more certain I am of its educational qualities. I am told by some of my more rigorous colleagues in adult education that all this enthusiasm for drama is trifling and frothy. lam told that people who take up amateur theatricals are there just to show off. Even if that is true—is it so dreadful? If a man works at an assembly belt in a factory all day, hasn’t he every right and reason to play at being Owen Glyndwr or King Henry V two or three times a year? And if a girl spends most of her hours taking down in shorthand the commercial English of the bald, obese employer, hasn’t she some kind of right to dress up as Juliet and electrify the audience of 200 in the institute hall as she cries, with the stage moon flickering on her enraptured face. ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou. Romeo?’ Call it wish-fulfilment, call it showing off—for all that, I call it an experience which makes people feel grand, which enlarges and sweetens tbeir self-respect—and most people will agree.”—From a speech by Mr. W. E. Williams, 8.A., at a meeting of the Educational Settlement Association, printed in the “Common Room.”