THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 126, 21 February 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Com ments — Reflection s -Sorrow avails only when the past is converted into experience; and from failure lessons are to be learned which never arc io be forgotten.'—F. W. Robertson. ♦ ♦ ♦ ■■Mussolini is tn the unpleasant position of having for ally a country altogether stronger tl.i-an bis own, outclassing him both in the air and on the land. The only possession in which Mussolini could outdo Germany and maintain his own ends in discussions with her was his fleet. His sea arm has now suffered this crippling blow." —"Manchester Guardian." "Food for EuroiX) means soldiers for Germany, and men, women and adolescents working in the munitions plants instead of the fields. Today all forms of food are, in fact, munitions of war in the direct and immediate sense. A shipment of 50,000 tons, or 10 shiploads, of wheat has the nutritive equivalent of 187,000 tons of potatoes, which' could be transmuted into 17,000 tons of alcohol, the basis for 11,000 tons of high octane gasoline; a shipment of 50,000 tons of milk made into butter would release enough margarine and other fats to produce a sufficient quantity of lubricating oil to supply 50 submarines for 12 roundtrip crossings of the Atlantic.”—Mr. Herbert Agar, editor of the Louisville ‘-Courier-Journal,” speaking before 125 American Protestant Church leaders at a luncheon sponsored by the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches.

“To the contrast, ever present, of poverty and wealth, palace and slum, beauty and ugliness, which has been typical of Ixmdou life through the ages, there is added now a further contrast more significant still. On the one hand, the wanton destruction of the humble homes of the simple poor and, on the other, the quiet, dogged, cheerful determination of the dwellers therein that this senseless savagery shall serve for nothing more than to increase the certainty of the ultimate victory that they will win. On the one hand, broken and battered factories, silent, still, but, on the other, the countless establishments stilt untouched, bumming with the industry of eager men and women bent upon making more than good the productive capacity thus lost. People such as these can never be beaten.” —Mr. Charles Key, M.P., for a London East End constituency, in the House of Commons.

“In Germany the universities, so eminent in every field of research and scholarship, have felt the blighting hand of totalitarian control. The German courts have lost their pre-war independence and integrity. M bile there were harsh military aspects of life in Imperial Germany, there was never any suggestion of the obscene brutalities that have taken place in so many Nazi concentration camps. Creative literature in the Third Reich is dead, killed by too much Stale attention. The establishment of regimented chambers of culture, to which all writers and artists must belong, the figurative putting of authors into uniform, the insistence on the maintenance of a propagandist character in literature and art have had precisely the same effects as the very similar measures which have been adopted in the Soviet. Union.” —Mr. W. 11. Cham berlin, in “Harper's Magazine.”

"Hitler has imposed a 'new order,’ from the Vistula to the Bay of Biscay. He has taken over a ready-made complex of great cities, well developed industry and agriculture, highly civilized populations. By superior force he is presumably able to do what he likes with his captives. What has he done? So far he has produced only an immense- pool of misery and want. FuiTbermore, lie has brutalized every society he has touched. As it flares up in savagery in one place after another, iu political murder iti Bucharest, in student’ riots iu Zagreb, in fresh round-ups in Prague, the new order reveals itself for what it is—a. reign of disorder leading to anarchy. Whether the landslides reported from Norway are sabotage or not, a plot to move mountains to impede the German masters fits into the general picture of violence begetting violence. Tiffs is the preamble to the Constitution of the Nazi Europe—murder in the name of law. terror in the name of Government, famine in the name of redistribution of wenlt.li.” —"New York Times.”

■•British military circles, considering persistent reports that the Axis Powers planned an assault through Spain on Gibraltar, state that the Kock had been strengthened considerably since the war began. They add that they could not see how the Axis could take this fortress, which has been British since 1704, They admit that Britain might not be able Io use the naval base at Gibraltar if the peninsula were attacked, but assert that the fortress itself could hold out for a year without outside supplies. Axis forces would have to make a frontal assault to have a chance of capturing Gibraltar, against machinegunners protected by 2tX) feet of solid rock. Any idea of an attack from the sea was ruled out. 'as long as the British Fleet is not on tin.' bottom of live ocean.’ Il could not be taken from the air, for bombs would explode far above the defending forces in the honeycombed rocks; nor could it be battered into submission by far-off guns, for the Kock is too solid for,such attrition. If tiie Axis wants Gibraltar, it will have to storm it by sending massed troops along a narrow strip of land covered by heavy machine-gun lire. It was ‘most unlikely’ that attacking troops could get through in formidable numbers." ■ London correspondent of New York "Herald Tribune." The Voice. Can yon with clear amt practised vision See beyond cities that will be destroyed? Or hear, louder than guns' derision, A future freedom singing in the void Sprung from a war's decision? We, urgent to know our hopes return ing, Fear broken body and the desolate town. How should we guess, beyond a city burning, A harvest springing from the grass cut down Not singed ami brown? —Ursula Wood, in "The observer,” London. ,