OVERSEAS OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 30 April 1931, Page 8

OVERSEAS OPINION

THE ENGLISHMAN. “The Englishman may say little, but down in his heart there burns an intense love of his country and pride in his heritage—a unique civilisation, and a history every surviving monument ot which is precious. Yet every day we hear of threats of danger, of scars suddenly indicted upon a favourite scene. What we destroy of History’s and Nature’s gift we can never replace foi ourselves or our children’s children.’ Mr Ramsay MacDonald. SCOTS IN GOVERNMENT. “Scotsmen have an instinct and a training lor administration. There is hardly a spot on earth that lias not witnessed it,’ 1 ’ writes Mr RosslynMitehell in the “Scots Observer.’ "As u nation it is in all things, except re ligion, progressive. It used to be called ‘conservatively Liberal.’ It lias no die-hard, last-ditch Tories such as are bred in the southern counties of England. Glass distinctions have been melted by the glow of Burns and the warmth of the golf course and the curling pond. I believe that il Scotland had a Parliament for purely Scottish affairs it would lead the world. I am not concerned about Army and Navy, Foreign Office and even Post Office. Let us administer land laws, education, burglial affairs, traffic problems and ‘social evils,’ and this nation will set the pace for the nations.” SHOULD THE MURDERER HANG? “Perhaps an execution that made the greatest possible appeal to tbo sentiment of social vengeance was that of the murderer of Police-constable Gutteridge. This deliberate and brutal coime was committed by a man who had already undergone severe punishment at the hands of the law and must have had a full realisation of its power. So great was the public satisfaction a I bis execution that it ignored the question of how it came about th°t such a criminal could mature in our midst—a question the answer >

is of more importance that the hanging of half a dozen murderers. Every murder is an example of the failure of the death penalty to deter. Wo have no knowledge that can justiiy the assumption that the removal of a penalty surviving from more barbaric times will be followed by an increase of the crime it is supposed to prevent.’ —“The Lancet.” PROPHET AND LAGGARD. “He who is in advance of his time is called a prophet,” says Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, “and lie who is behind his time is known as a laggard, but often the laggard appears to count loins much as the prophet. It takes time, much tune, in a democratic society lor the public mind to catch up with an idea. The inertia of habit is powerful indeed, and it, struggles mightily against change, even when that change is domonstrnbly for good. The international mind is nothing other than that habit of thinking of foreign relations and business, and that habit of dealing with them, which regards the several nations of the civilised world as friendly and co-operating equals in aiding the progress of civilisation, in developing commerce and industry, and in spreading enlightenment and culture throughout the world.”

ONE THING AT A TIME. “Try to read a hook and listen to a symphony, a string quartet, or a song. Observe how, when the mind is concentrated on the understanding of tilt written word, the music will go unheard, and vice versa. The attention may, with conscious effort, oscillate so rapidly between both functions that they appear to he simultaneous,, but this is actually impossible,” Howard Bliss in the “Choir.” “To g

the best out ot either hook or music—or, to go even further, to get anything I worth having out of either, one or the other must have the minds single and : devoted attention. Two messages cauj not he received together without mutI ual damage, whether they reach the ! mind through the same or different faculties. If either message is worthy of j reception, whether it is that of a picture, a hook, a piece of music, or j speech, it deserves the undivided attention of the recipient. The question of music at meals is pertinent here, but music at meals is such an I appallingly unaesthetic performance that one shrinks even from its contemplation.”

THE PAINTER AND THE THEATRE “The creative painter has fled from the theatre. For when we put on plays that are illusions of reality we return once more to scenes that are illusions of architecture; and once more use our painters to paint fake panels and pilasters in living-rooms and false books in false niches,” writes Mr M. Mamies in the “Studio”. “Interior decoration— or money-plus-taste—doe- not rest And when we want imagination of fantasy in the theatre wo light. Light, with its amazing fluidity, its variety, its sensationalism of effect, has chased ’the painter out of the theatre. When a gelatine filter can make a column red. why paint it? If trees can he projected bv light, why waste pigment on the designing of them? Tf a certain shape lit in certain ways can throw a score of valuable shadows, why paint static shapes ? And so a new medium has evolved—form-plus-light; and the theatre is using it instead of naint. This limitless instrument of light-plus-form is. for the most part, in the hands of electricians and property-men, when it'should be in the hands of genius.”