CAUSE FOR ANXIETY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 45, 22 January 1926, Page 10

CAUSE FOR ANXIETY

LOSS OF LIVES IN WAR. EFFECT ON BRITAIN. “1 ! LONDON, Jan. 9. The Primo Minister (Mr Baldwin), delivering tho presidential address to the Classical Association, said: “Abovo tho cries against the dangerous symptomatic burden of armaments and tho weight of taxation there is a greater cause for anxiety. “It would almost appear as if human stock is like fruit trees whoso best havo tended to deteriorate after generations of useful, and productive service. There aro fears among those responsible for the Government, fears not yet gripping the nation by tho throat, but taking grisly shape in the twilight, that tho Great War by its destruction of enormous numbers of our best lives, has not left enough of the strongest J3ritish breed to carry on the work of the Empire. “Our task is hard enough, but it will bo accomplished. All Europe recognises that another war would cause the fall of the civilisation of the ages.

“We must read tho danger signals that Rome has left. Tho torch she bore, after many centuries, passed to Britain, civilisation’s youngest son. Britain’s race is not yot run, but it will bo run more worthily if Britons baso their lives on the Romans’ stern virtues.” LOOSENESS OF SPEECH. Criticising the tendency to looseness of speech, Mr Baldwin compared tho ancients’ clean-run sentences with tho slovenly .British diction, jwhoso scribblers swathed the thinnest thoughts in a profusion of words for the purposo of making them appear larger. I havo gained from tho classics a profound respect for tho truth of words, and learned to detect tho equivocal phrase lurking in the tropical growth of oratory. I havo always endeavoured to speak unambiguously.” _ Tho Prime Minister paid a tribute to Lord Oxford’s lucidity of phrasing and felicity, based on Roman models.