Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 13 May 1940, Page 4

Timely Topics

• On the eve cf the absorption of * t Czechoslovakia by Germany, Herr |Hitler invited the population to come f out and celebrate

1 A TRAGIC I ANNIVERSARY.

the invasion of their country. That

these efforts failed fwas, Lord Halifax said in a broadcast '■< |to the Czech people, a tribute to their ♦courage and unity in adversity. It is | not easy for Englishmen, who have f grown up in freedom for centuries, ;;to appreciate fully the courage re!!quired to retain its national spirit by •a people whose every action is watch|[ed and every word noted by brutal I overlords, and who see from time to ytime friends and relatives dragged of! "to a concentration camp for an incautious act of patriotism. Workers, too. | are carried away to work for Ger--many in Germany; and all the time by oppression, obstruction, manipulaIdation, and sometimes outright rob"bery Czech owners are being deprived 'of their shops and ‘businesses and ..Germans put into their places. Hitler "knew well enough how much loot ' | there was to be seized from the industrious Czechs. The vast metallurgical | industry of Bohemia and Moravia is "now working exclusively for the benefit of Nazi Germany. The Gcr- | mans have obtained easy possession !by .robbery of the Brno arms factory J |and of the Skoda works at Pilsen; and ' | the textile industry is now almost entirely in their hands. The ersatz materials of the Reich are also creeping ; into the processes of a country which ■used not to need them. \ j « » » * *

A correspondent of “The Times,”. discussing the inadequacy of religious instruction in English schools, writes: “I have bec-n

SCHOOLS AND RELIGION. ■

closely associated with the manage-

ment of men and boys’ clubs , for some 30 years, and from that experience I can assure your readers that of all the thousands of young men in the industrial district ,of London, with which I am familiar, who have passed under my supervision only a mere handful know anything about religion at. all. When I was a member of Parliament I mentioned this fact to the then President of the Board of Education; he assured me that I was labouring under a misconception and he warned me that in any case I must not judge by London alone, which was notoriously indifferent to religious instruction. I was, of course, judging by the only test at my disposal—an extremely valid one, by the way—namely, result Whether religious instruction in London schools is good, bad, or indifferent, the result of it. is that only the most infinitesimal fraction of those who receive that instruction go out into the world with any knowledge of religion, or any interest in it whatsoever. “Many of us hold that it was the silly sectarian controversy of some decades ago, waged by pious persons | who hated each other far more than they loved their faith, which is mainly, responsible for the deplorably ef- * fete system of religious instruction in some schools, and that utter lack of* it in others. It is too much to hope that these controversies can be hush- ™ ed, that the persons who wish them maintained can be swept on one side, and that by saner counsels a tion, which is rapidly leading us tA paganism, can be completely altereci so that once again our youth may receive moral and ethical instruction on religious basis?