THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 189, 8 May 1941, Page 8

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Commentsi—Reflections

In tumults and dissensions the wors: man has the most power; peace and quiet bring out the good qualities of men.—Tacitus.

“Booth Tarkington, the novelist, in a statement in New York, predicted a British victory. ‘Britons are fighting for their life and liberty,’ he said. ‘The Nazis are fighting to retain other people’s property they' have taken. The man fighting for life, other things be' ing equal, will put up a harder battle than the man fighting to keep some thing he took from somebody else.’ “The Scotsman” (Edinburgh).

“No child in England shall suffer from Hitler’s blockade. His ration is the first responsibility of the State We build his body so that he may be strong to. face the future. No child in England shall find.his claim to know ledge stripped from him by the blitzkrieg We build his mind because we know that freedom can only be protected by those who can think for themselves. Every child that we can we shall save from the bombers. His body, nerve and soul is counted too precious by us to be left to the indiscriminate ravages of cities under fire. This young England we shall .•onstrnct in the heat of battle as an example and inspiration to the dead cities of Europe.”—“Evening Standard” (Loudon).

“The main danger to be avoided is that which overtook Britain after the last war, when social legislation took tlw form of creating a kind of eleemosynary State in which comfort and safety first replaced enterprise and risk. This led inevitably to protectionist duties in order to try to main tain those comfortable standards behind a tariff wall, with the poison of permanent unemployment as its sequel. The ‘Daily Herald.’ the organ of the British trade-unions, still harps upon ‘social security’ as the goal of British Labour policy. But something more than this is needed if Britain is tc retain its place in the world and not to relapse into the Maginot Line mindedness of pre-war days. Lloyd George gave Britain a slogan after the last war which ran ‘Britain must have a land fit for heroes to live in.’ If he had changed one word and said a ‘land fit for heroes to work in’ he would have set an ideal which best expressed the proper answer to Hitler’s ‘New Order,’ which visualizes a land only fit for slaves to toil in.”—G. V. Ormsby, writing from London in the New York “Wall Street Journal.”

“At the beginning of the war the British civilian population was far better protected against gas attack than was the German. If there was any one point which the British A.R.P. organization had given thought and attention to, it was gas defence. Preparation for gas defence in Germany was on a far less elaborate scale; it was estimated that not more than 25 per cent, of the German civilian population possessed masks. But the Germans could confidently count on Britain not initiating gas attacks on civilians: and it is possible that the Germans have held back their own use of gas, hoping perhaps to avoid the need of using it at all, anxious to obtain the full effect of surprise if they did decide to use it. There has been a tendency in Britain to relax gas precautions and the fear of gas. It has not' been used, and all the elaborate preparations of September, 1939, are tending to recede into the background of popular thought. Just such a moment might be the one in which the greatest degree of confusion and panic could be produced by the sudden in-, troduction of a series of gas raids; as accompaniments, of course, fo other operations, and perhaps so distributed as to paralyse important communications centres. It is reassuring to note from British official utterances that this possibility is not being forgotten.” —From a New York “Herald Tribune” article by Major George Fielding Eliot.

"Axis propaganda In the Middle East has followed two distinct lines. First, pamphlets, radio broadcasts and paid agents have been used to produce a defeatist atmosphere by proclaiming Britain’s imminent collapse. From four to six times every day, Bari and Berlin broadcast news of terrific British defeats, with announcers usually making the obvious deduction that to side with Britain in such circumstances would be foolhardy. More vicious were the stories of British atrocities against Islam. Those have been manufactured on a mass production basis along with secret documents purporting to reveal Britain’s evil designs on Arab lands. One of Berlin’s favourite stories has been about an alleged treaty between Britain and the Zionists by which the former undertook to deliver to the latter vast stretches of territory reaching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and beyond. So often was th- story repeated that, apparently finding it was taking root, the London am' the Jerusalem radios had to issue official denials. Other favourites in Berlin have been stories about misbehaviour—-es-pecially towards mosques and holy places—on the part of Australian soldiers and about their inhuman

cruelty. Some of these yarns have been rather lurid and apparently .appealed to the Arab imagination, for the British again issued official denials.” —Albert Viton, in the American Journal “Foreign Affairs.”

The Mother. (Written in 1890). She stands, a thousand-wintered tree. By countless morns impearled; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed.

Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land with land.

O ye by wandering tempesi sown ’Neath every alien star, Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar! For ye are still her ancient seed I On younger soil let fall—- | Children of Britain’s island-breed, i To whom the Mother in her need | Perchance may one day call. —William Watson