THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 9, 6 October 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments—-Reflections Intercession. O God Almighty, Lord of Hosts look down, we beseech Thee, with thy favour and in. Thy mercy upon our troops, our airmen, and our sailors, also those of our allies, now engaged in war, and crown them with victory. Cover their heads in the day of battle, give them valour that comes of faith, and the mercy that beseems Christian soldiers. Have compassion on those who suffer, the sick, the wounded,, the dying, and the mourners for the fallen. Bring the war, if it please Thee, to a right and lasting peace.—Amen. ? r Which of you- will stop the vent of hearing when loud rumour speaks?— Shakespeare (Henry IV). "I always think that to ask Great Britain what her peace aims are is rather like asking a man who has been attacked by two murderous gangsters in a dark street what he is fighting about. We didn’t want this war. We did all we could to avoid it. We came into it in order to restore the rule ot law in Europe and to overthrow the rule of gangsterdom and violence. When the war is over we hope to build a better world- out of the ruins, just as we hope to replace the ruins of London by better and more beautiful buildings. We are working on the blueprints already. But it no good making very definite plans till we know how much is going to be.left for us to build with and who is going to help us.”—Mr, Duff Cooper. * •

“The world after a Hitler victory would be a world more savage than any written of in the darkest pages of our human story. It would be the horror of history. No sane person, outside the ranks of the more fanatical Nazis, could wish’for a world in which the present conditions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belaud and the rest of Hitler's victims are.perpetuated. I could understand Prussianism or a soldier’s world. But a gangster world such as Nazism, in which one sees the resurgence of all the most hateful elements in poor human nature, in which not only every essential Christian principle, but the finer and nobler human instincts, are trampled upon, and man reverts to the brute—such a world is an insult not only to our ethical feeling but also to our intelligence. It is in conflict with .the principles on which this universe is founded. We can only answer it with the grand and absolute refusal.” -Field-Marshal Smuts in a broadcast to the South African people.’

One of the questions asked at a recent meeting of the British Broadcasting Corporation Brains Trust related to the playing of march tunes. “■Why,” the questioner asked, “do people feel a thrill when they bear a march well played?” Several answers were given. Professor Huxley said the thrill was due to certain types of glands and muscles being called into action. Commander Campbell surmised that rhythm had a lot to do with it, the kind of rhythm that caused you to lift up your feet and presumably your heart. Mr. Harold Nicholson went further and suggested that a march imparted a sense of continuous efficiency such as ordinary independent work does not give; people felt that something was moving forward in a definite direction, with a planned order and also at considerable speed, so that they wanted to take a share in what was going on, Finally, Mr. Douglas Woodruff spoke of human life being basically a journey. “I believe,” be said, “that all great books in the world are stories of journeys and that the ordinary private person lives with a perpetual sense of not getting anywhere in particular, and the idea of a march is the collective moving forward to something—no matter what.”

“Wbat is at stake in this war is not the merits of one system of society against another—Liberal-Capitalism, Communism, or Fascism. Hitler is perfectly prepared to suport all these successively, or even simultaneously, if need be. He will be all systems to all men if thereby he can damn some. What is at stake is whether the world is to live, under the domination of a man and a country to whom words have ceased to mean anything whatever except as instruments of decep tion, to achieve more and more power. There is a ease for ‘Liberal-Capitalism,’ there is a case for almost any form of social organization you cau mention. That is not the point. The point is that the cement disappears from every form of society, the cement disappears from every form of international rela tionship unless they are based upon truth, Personal relations, social relations, international relations cannot endure unless what men say corresponds with what they mean, or at least bears some relation to it. If there is to be any sort of social order in the world, if there is to be any kind of civilization, any kind of stable international relations whatever, we must kill this philosophy of lies and deception which Nazism has made into a permanent instrument of policy. That is why I have insisted so often that basically this war is pot a political war, not even an economic war. but. primarily a religious war.”—Mr. W. J. Brown in a recent address. * ♦ • London Remembered On this old street bluff Henry often strode, Replete with colour and with mighty dreams. Elizabeth in girlish pride, once rode To royal fame along this way, where teems Now London’s traffic. Here the sea kings walked— Bold Drake and Hawkins—ere they ploughed the grim Atlantic, seeking gold. There Shakespeare talked Of his now play .that would bring fame to him. Rough Cromwell hatched his plot against the kings In this plain house, and in this quaint retreat Wise Johnson sat and talked of bookish things To bards and artists. Wesley stirred this street To new found visions of the true and good, And here young Shelley sang of brotherhood.” —Thomas Curtis Clark, in the “Christian Century.”