Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 27 November 1937, Page 4

Timely Topics

BELIEF AND ACTION

“Let this age take confidence in itself,” says Viscount Samuel, in his book, “Belief and Action.“lt is too diffident. Ashamed of the Great War, angered by the course of events that followed it, recognising its own bewilderment, the age has been ready to plead guilty to any accusation. If a school of economists say that material factors rule events, we all confess ourselves materialists and the pursuit of weath the aim of our social system. If i* school of psyhcologists lays stress on primeval instincts in the determination of conduct, we see ourselves irredeemably primitive, and develop a crude sculpture and painting and a barbarous music to

suit our sub-human characters. If dictators, or would-be dictators, proclaim that we are unfit to govern ourselves, we perceive all around us the faults of our democracies and forget their virtues. Perhaps a later age may form a different judgment. Perhaps our posterity may see in the Great War, not something sordid and mercenary, but —for all its fundamental folly—an episode that was in essence idealistic; 'a stupendous event, in which 10 millions of men laid down their lives, not primarily for materialistic ends of any sort, but most of them for duty as they understood it, for patriotism, for liberty, or the vindication of law among nations; in which multitudes of ordinary men showed greater courage and endurance, in the face of greater perils, than had ever been recorded in the annals of mankind. Perhaps posterity may see this time as one of the formative ages in history; when science was effulgent, knowledge was diffused throughout the world 'and among all classes as never before, and an unprecedented effort was made to rid mankind of poverty and to spread the amenities of leisure and culture. Let us not be so re'ady to idealise past and future to the detriment of our own age, but rather show ourselves patriots of the present.” I 0 @ i Words That Tell A Story FIRST FRUITS.— -The first profitable fruits of labour. In husbandry, the first corn that is cut at harvest. The words are also used in an evil sfense, as the first fruits of sin, the first fruits of repentance, etc. 0 g 1 0 0 Do You Know -- ? (1.) Where was the late King George V. born? (2.) What is Fulham? (3.) Who was Robert Herrick? (4.) What was the Golden Age? (5.) Who was Anne Hathaway? (6.) Who wrote “The Prisoner Of Zenda”? Answers to the above questions ] will he found on Page 3, i