THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 51, 24 November 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections Intercession. Father, we beseech Thee to send across this tormented world a new wave of light, revealing to the peoples who now dread or destroy each other that together they are Thy children. In this light make clear to our enemies the foolishness and the evil of the violence in which they have trusted; take from their hearts the false worship of the arm of flesh that trusts for safety and advantage to the crushing of weaker peoples and the seizure of their heritage. O Lord, - help us to frustrate that arrogance of race that destroys the liberties of others, and by Thy Spirit waken our foes from the bondage to false teaching that impels them to seek their good through cruelty and pride; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is almost as irritating to be patronised as to be wronged.—Theodore Roosevelt.

“No exaggerated hopes will be placed on this single act (the attempted assassination of M. Laval). It is a long step from assassination to revolution. ‘Reader, fancy not, in thy languid way,’ wrote Carlyle, ‘that insurrection is easy. Insurrection is difficult; each individual uncertain even of his distant neighbours, what strength is in him, what strength is against him; certain only that, in case of failure, his individual portion is the gallows. Eight hundred thousand heads, and each of them a separate estimate of these uncertainties, a separate theorem of action conformable to that; out of so many uncertainties does the certainty and inevitable net result, never to be abolished, go on, at all moments, bodying itself—leading thee also toward civic crowns or an ignominious noose.’ ” —“Evening Standard,” London.

“Very valuable from the point of view of Soviet war potential is the fact that almost the entire young nonferrous metal industry is located in Kazakstan (copper, zinc, chromium, nickel), the Urals (copper), and Eastern Siberia and Central Asia (tin mines), while chemicals, despite the continued preponderance of European Russia are likewise strongly represented in the Urals (synthetic ammonia and potassium), and Kazakstan (working of phosphorite deposits). One of the many beneficial effects of these changes in industrial location has been to bring production nearer to its raw materials and thus secure a badly needed economy in transport, whose network in the East has otherwise been considerably extended. The recent policy of making the various districts of the Soviet Union in general, and of the Soviet East in particular, self-supporting in matters of food and the products of light’ industry should have a similar salutary result. All this, incidentally, helps to release transport for military purposes.”—Dr. E. M. Chossudowsky, in “The Scotsman.”

“The Dominions are now normally represented at meetings of the War Cabinet by the Secretary of State, who is consulted on all matters affecting the Dominions. He is not officially a member, but Lord Cranborne has attended every meeting since he was appointed to his present office last year. The Secretary of State meets the Dominions High Commissioners regularly and passes on to them information from the War Cabinet affecting their countries. The High Commissioners in their turn inform the United Kingdom Government about happenings in the Dominions. There is also a constant flow of communications into the Dominions Office from our own High Commissioners. There are said to be technical difficulties in the way of making a visiting Prime Minister a member of the War Cabinet ex officio, but in practice he does attend every meeting. The point that may be raised here is whether his authority would not be increased if he were to come as of right and not merely by invitation.” —The Parliamentary Correspondent of “The Times,” London.

“Tflte strategy of defence imposed upon isolationist leadership is based upon the same deadly error which has wrecked all the free nations of Europe. It is the illusion that the defensive is stronger than the offensive. It is evident enough now why the illusion of the impregnable defensive captured the imagination of the democracies. What the people of England, France and America remembered most vividly of the war of 1914-18 were the bloody offensives on the Western Front, in which infantry was hurled against barbed wire and machineguns and then massacred by the defenders. It was this memory that caused the French to feel that if they built the Maginot Line they could never again be invaded. What the Germans remembered most vividly was not the three and a-half years of bloody stalemate but the final three months when, with tanks and air superiority, the Allies did break the German front, Long before Hitler was heard of the German Army was studying the lessons of its defeat, and the strategical genius shown by the Germans in this war is based upon the real, rather than the imaginary, lessons of the other war. Thus, while the democracies built Maginot Lines, the Germans organized armoured divisions; while the democracies manufactured defensive pursuit planes, the Germans manufactured bombers; while the democracies taught their peopl to think of passive defence, the Germans got themselves thoroughly ready for the offensive. Nor was it only in strictly military affairs that the Germans took the offensive. They pursued an offensive foreign policy, designed to separate and encircle the democracies one by one and then to compel them when conquered to assist in the offensive against the next victim.”—Walter Lippman in “New York Life.”

* * * Tile Good in 111. Oh yet we trust that, somehow good Will lie the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects no doubt, and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void. When God hath made the pile complete. , —Tennyson.