Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 29 May 1940, Page 4

Timely Topics

“The group as a unit has an ethical character and ethical responsibilities, as has the individual (says the Rev.

INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS.

Geoffrey F. Allen, of Canton, in “The Call of God in

|Time of War.") f “Often we get caught unconsciously ? into the mind and character of one iyoup, and acquire without, noticing fit the ethical attitude dominant in | this group, toward rival groups. *“Cften the level of behaviour of a •group fails far below the behaviour of fits members, acting as individuals, f “A society or institution may act | with a bitterness and selfishness toi ward other rival institutions which is | far below the level of love of the s various individuals in their individual i behaviour. It is not unknown for a f church to show intense suspicion and l hostility toward another rival church; • acting as members of the group, the f members share in this hostility, al- = though, meeting' the members of the f other church as individuals, they ? would at once treat them with the | generosity of friends, f* “Can we see an inter-nation moral?ity. parallel to the ethic of inter-indi-ividual relationships? From the ethic ? which we have learned to respect for | individuals can we get a guide for. the i way in which nation groups should befhave toward one another.”

It is to be feared (says “Lucia" in the “Manchester Guardian”) that the slight regard for truth displayed by

A FAMILIAR FAILING.

Nazi broadcasters is not wholly a product of the present regime in Germany.

Carlyle, though he admired so many other German characteristics, was under no illusions about the national—and especially the official—gift for falsification. “,T don’t suppose a man was ever more weary of a task than I was of my ‘ Frederick the Great,’ ” he once told Charles Eliot Norton. “It was good hard drudgery—sifting mostly a monstrous accumulation of lies—and of ail the nations the German lies with the most scrupulosity and detail.”

Carlyle’s task of lie-sift ing will, however, be nothing to the future task of the historian who comes to writq an impartial account of the rise of the Nazi party to power and its later conduct of policy abroad and at home.