Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 29 December 1937, Page 4

Timely Topics

MARTIAL REACTIONS. Says the “New York Times”: It is of no use to ask the significance of bright colours in flags and uniforms; of 1 those spinal sensations that arise when., the drums begin to roll and the drum-major shakes his tasseled baton and the merry rhythmic tooting and booming of the brasses set the pulse to throbbing; of the mad desire to gel into the parade that seizes almost every one of us, of whatever age, of whatever political belief or station in life. These reactions are deep. They may go back to t)ie days when the tribal drums boomed in the jungles and the young men of the tribes danced singing around the fire. They are synchronised to the beating of our hearts. They are primitive. Even the confirmed pacifist, ready to go to prison or before the firing squad for his faith, cannot root them out. Half of him, at any rate—the irrational half, out of which come mobs and poetry and music, and the glory and splendour and fathomless tragedy of human life, responds to them. Yet let the pacifist be comforted. These emotions, ranging from the purely visceral to something that can be called spiritual, 'are not war. They have merely been, over and over again,

exploited by war-makers. John Wesley refused to let the devil have all the good tunes—an example followed later by Moody 'and Sankey, the Salvation Army and other militant religionists. In the same way we can refuse to let the devil have all the thrills of a grand parade. As every front-line fighter knows, war is not parades. War -is weary men, plodding in the .rain towards a rendezvous with wounds and death.

I Words Of Wisdom : : I That action is not warrant- j | able which either fears to ask j I the divine blessing on its per- \ j formance, or, though it has sue- | I ceeded, does not come with i j thanksgiving for its success, i 1 Tale Of The Day Judge: “Do you plead guilty .or not guilty?” Prisoner (not hearing): “I beg pardon.”