TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4658, 16 February 1935, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

A Nobler Age.

A nobler age, in which the human race would be raised to “a level of achievement and true prosperity such as it has never achieved hitherto," was e’nvisaged by the Marquis of Lothian in delivering his presidential address to the 23rd annual conference of educational associations at University College, London. Such an age, he said, would emerge from the present chaos if sufficient people kept their heads. The wars, revolutions, and dictatorships of the past 20 years represented the struggle of outworn ideals and forms to resist disintegration and the birth-pangs of the new age. Already it was clear that the nations which had been faithful to liberty and the scientific spirit were making better headway through the depression than those who had surrendered their thinking and freedom into dictatorial hands. Two ideas had appeared which if we learned to make them practical would resolve our difficulties. The first was that humanity was not a single family. The second was Socialism—not the programme of any Socialist party, but the general idealism which sought to repeat, in the economic sphere, the liberty a'nd equality which had already been attained by Western civilised man in the political sphere. The central problem was to reconcile the Socialist idea with individual liberty and initiative. The attainment of the new age would come only if there were enough people who refused to submit their minds to external control and determined to think for themselves, scientifically, honestly, intelligently, lovingly and mercifully, and to act fearlessly in the light of that thinking. That was the essential attribute of manhood and womanhood, which Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and other dictators were trying to destroy.

Natives and the Land.

It is an old source of argument among those who are deeply interested in the future of the native African people under British rule, remarks the Manchester Guardian, whether the admittedly superior adva'ncement and contentment of the natives- of the West African colonies are due to superiority of race compared with the tribes of East Africa or to a sounder system of administration. Mr. Charles Roden Buxton, who gives his impressions gained on a recent visit to the West African colonies, is in no doubt. He finds the root of the matter not in racial difference, but in the provision of adequate land for native cultivation. He regards the “sum of human happiness” in the West as “far greater than in Kenya—incomparably greater than in South Africa.” He points to the busy little markets to which the natives come with their own produce, the admirable quality of the native houses, the excellent relations that exist between the white Civil Service and the native, the general air of cheerfulness that even/ the world depression has not sufficed to dispel. And he attributes it all to the basic fact that even in the worst of times the people can still live tolerably on their little patches of land. Even more significant, there is no dispossessed labouring class for whom work at low wages is the only alternative to starvation and whose presence in the cities is a perpetual and growing problem.