NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17885, 13 September 1921, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

« \ ' CONTEMPT FOB THE LAW. It will corns m a shock to many people to note that a member of Pariiament presided at a meeting held in Auckland on Sunday night at which defiance of the law was brazenly advocated. The speaker, Mr. Manflal, an Indian lawyer. sa*d he would like to see the workers °P«nly reading such books as' " Red Europe, and on several people remarking that the book was not easily obtainable, Mr. Manila] said that a few thousand of the workers should sell the book under the noses of the police and let the police arrest the whole of them. This ia the Indian barrister who the other day waa refused the right to practice in New Zealand. He is returning to India, but before leaving New Zealand has made it abundantly clear that the New Zealand Law Society took the proper course in opposing his application for the right to practice in New Zealand. The interest Now Zealanders will now be centred more in the action of Mr. Bart ram, MP. for Grey Lynn, who* presided at the meeting, and who uttered no word of protest against al deliberate incitement to law-breaking. RED RUSSIA. As to " Red Europe," the following picture of Red Russia from a recent work by Harold Begbie may serve to show some of the dangers of revolutionary propaganda such as the Indian barrister by open advocacy, and Mr. Bartram, by the silence that gives cohsent, would have ~®, w °rkers of New X Zealand read:Cattle flayed alive and sent bellowing wth unutterable pain through the fields o Russia. Little girls wrenched away from their mothers' arms and staked down m the open for the lust of revolutionists. Churches invaded and white-haired old Pnests kicked to death on the altar steps. Men and women thrown into torture houses, their shrieks by night and day piercing the walls and no soul daring to raise its voice in protest. Religion pro claimed a thing accursed, and denounced as 'opinm for the people.' The moral law abrogated. A Jew on the throne of multitudinous Russia proclaiming a new world—a world godless, lawless, loveless. I These things # were in the heart of man. ! It seemed to him that out of the black ooze threatening from Russia, which rolled w.i'h a weary heaviness under a starry sky, there arose slowly and awfully the appalling head of a monster so horrible and loathsome that it froze the blood to behold it; and it seemed to him that ont of this hnge and terror-striking head, whose matted locks and dragon's teeth dripped blood which reddened all the sea about it, there came a voice never before heard on the earth, the voice of an animal not» a man, and a man not an animal, proclaiming the .death of God and the rule of Lust. Might it be that Jihi s devilish thang which had already drowned in blood the struggling civilisation of Russia would creep over the world, submerging German civilisation and French civilisation, till, finally, it drowned the village greens of England. the ( green woods where children gathered bluebells in spring and blackberries in autumn, the old stone bridges over rivers, the church towers which had rung their Christmas chimes for so many centuries; of ordered progress/the little homes under then- tall trees, and the ancient buildings of pious men long since dead—sweep away all this loveliness in one blood-red wave, and with it the laughter, the gladness, the courage and the sturdy virtue of the English heart. Was it poeible that the end had come, that ever, England had been weighed in the balance and found wahting, that the hordes of the East would Pour into these islands of Shakespeare and Milton of Newton and Lister, of Arne and Purcell, of Lamb and Charles Dickens— laughing islands, which to all the world for a thousand years had been a nest of nightingales, a fortress of loyalty, a lamp of knowledge, and a sword of justice—pour into these islands, sweeping away every sign of loveliness, even as the civilisation of Rome had been swept away by the Vandals. \Nas it possible! These things are in the heart of man. Bolshevism is a fact.

TO-DAY'S OPPORTUNITIES. A remarkable article on " Success " was recently written by Lord Beaverbrook, son of a Scottish minister, who began his career in Canada, and at the early age of 38 became a Peer and a Privy Councillor. Lord Beaverbrook says the three qualities which make for success are: Judgment, industry, and health. He says the opportunities for success are greater to-day than ever, and concludes: " Never was th.ere a moment more favourable for turning talent towards opportunity and opportunity into triumph than Great Britain now presents to the man or woman whom ambition stirs to make a success of life. The Dominions of the British Empire abolished long ago the privileges which birth confers. No bar has been set there to prevent poverty rising to the heig'hts of wealth and power, if the man were found equal to the task! lhe same development has taken place in Great Britain to-day. Men are no longer born into Cabinets; the ladder of education is rapidly reaching a perfection which enables a man born in a cottage or a slum attaining the zenith of success and power. There stEyid the tSiree attributes to be attained—judgment, industry, and health. Judgment can he ttn proved, industry can be acquired, health can be attained by those who will take the trouble. These are the three pillars on which we can build the golden pinnacle of success."

THE BRAIN'S SAFEGUARDS. J At a moment when ideas about the mechanism and working of the brain are being revised and rewritten interest attaches to the views expressed recently by \rbuthnot Lane on the effects of education on this organ. Speaking as a surgeon, he sees in any educational system the opening up of a pathway in the brain that is to say a mechanical effect. cells of the brain, he conceives, arrange themselves in a sequence determined by ° f the mad ° on their activity. The price of special knowi.age is an increased degree of general ignoring If this be granted—and Sir Arbuthnot B e th ana ;°f f of , the alterations effected in the skeleton by various kinds of manual a hour—then the discovery of aptitude is the necessary first utep in'anv education. Aptitude, too. acquire ™nL meaning. U ls not so much acircum scribed gift as a general direction or bent a tendency which, if developed, will Dro ! duce the highest degree of special effici ranL * V A CWt ° f general intelligence. Sir Arbuthnot remarks how rarelv an eminent classic succeeds in any scientific pursuit. If ,t is the case that the con cell!i"of S h'" ter-relationshi ps which the cells of the bram form in resDonse to the very arduous pursuit of classical studies unfit the owner to employ his brain in the study of scientific objects, are we wise in imparting to children more than a minimum of classical knowledge. From this view arises a new attitude to what teachers of the old school characterised as inattention. Inattention and its fellow forgetfulness, are seen not as faults but as measures of self-protection against a real and imminent danger. The former represents prevention, the latter cure. "Most of what one, fortunately. only be n^ beneficial, but may be se" ; oiisly detrimental to the usefulness an efficiency of the mdividu^,*