Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 13 December 1939, Page 4

Timely Topics

“There is only one thing that is truly and continuously satisfying in life, and that is creative work,” says M. Paderewski. “Creative

IDEAS ETERNAL.

work, take it as you will, is the only thing in life that gives supreme satis-

faction. Ideas are eternal. In. presenting them one reaches the loftiest heights. The form of presentation makes no difference. By creative work one gives one’s self a new life. Creative work kills death. This theme is a tempting one to elaborate. While you are composing, you live in a certain atmosphere which excludes everything else, practically. For instance, it excludes practising because practising is practically spade work, the drudgery. It is an absolute necessity and it is the tragic side of a musical artist, that necessity of continuous practising. It deprives you of many, not ‘only pleasures, but necessary things in life. It prevents you from reading, from thinking, from developing your intellect—-this, practis- ! ing every day the indispensable hours. Even now, with my normal work, after ‘ I have come to the knowledge that i playing is not working, I still need four or five hours a day of practising 1 with the concentration of mind that does not permit any intrusion. It is a slavery from which there is no escape.”

A correspondent of “The Times” wrote as follows on September 4: It is worthy of note that Russia and Ge r many resemble

THE TWO IDEOLOGIES.

each other in a more dangerous respect

than that of ideologies. They are alone among the great Powers of Europe in having a paramount interest in war, as distinct from the absolute necessity felt by Britain, France, Italy and Poland, in maintaining the peace., for political as well as humanitarian reasons.

The ultimate objectives of Hitler’s Reich are by now too well known to need any elaboration, nor can there be any doubt that these objectives could only be obtained by the Chancellor as the result of a successful war waged against France and England, with the support of the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, Stalin’s interest in war is also great, Russia would be able in any conflict to avoid, l?y reason of her geographical position in Europe, front-line participation involving the loss of her millions. ■ At the same time she would have a free hand to possess herself, with but little difficulty, of the four Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, and of the eastern limitrophal provinces of Poland.

The Soviet armies would —as Stalin no doubt argues—be enabled also to recover all that Russia has ever lost in Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and the Dobruja. Even European Turkey would be a possible conquest and thence the control of the Black Sea entrance and exit.

All these military victories would be, in the event of a general war in Europe, greatly facilitated by the ease with which Communist propaganda would spread its poison among the shattered peoples of Eastern Europe. And even given the victory for the Western Powers, who would then be strong enough to evict the Soviet from the conquered areas? Were Germany victorious, on the other hand, a compromise, as von Ribbentrop and Molotoff no doubflj told one another, could easily be effected.

On the other hand, the Reich would be furnished with almost inexhaustible supplies from -Russia, which, ceasing to threaten East Prussia, had thus liberated many hundreds of thousands of German troops to fight in the West. All these arguments may seem flimsy to an outside observer, but they are surely sufficient to account for any apparent volte-face or policy, and for a precipitate return to an unfortunately traditional plan with which Poland is only too familiar?