NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18706, 12 May 1924, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

~ AN .EDUCATED MAN. Mr. Stanley Baldwin was the principal speaker at the centenary celebrations of Birkbeck: College, London, and in the course of -: his address •■-.■; attempted* 4 ' a definition of education. -" No i one is |- educated who is ; not the master of his own job, and I think-1 would 'go farther and say that to be edu- ( cated you must . know/; enough of other men's ; jobs to be able to understand the part they are T»la,yhW in life, to play your own part, to sympathise with other men,- and to play your own part-.at your work, and your own part as a member of the ' Commonwealth. In ! other words •" to have humanity, by which I mean the ; knowledge of the things that pertain to humanity, and ' - urbanity; by which I mean the way of going about among your fellows (asr a- brother man or a sister woman, ready to help, ready to sympathise with people, and not to. go through life as a perpetual blister." ; The man who had humanity and urbanity was to his mind an educated man. "In my view, pride of intellect is more vulgar than the pride of the nouveau riche in his wealth, for the simple reason that the nouveau riche has, made his own i money, whereas your intellect is 'a gift of God. You may polish it up and get the best out of it, but for the instrument you are less responsible than any man." ■■>. A BRIDGE for MIGRATION. Migration, or the better distribution of our Empire folk, is so incomparably the greatest task to which our statesmen can set their , hands that the '' present rate of progress seems very disappointing says Sir Charles McLeod, : chairman of the council of the Royal '. Colonial Institute, in a letter to the London Times. ,In the Homeland, we. have a million and a quarter of workless workers upon whom. we are spending £100,000,000 a ; year in -'unproductive and demoralising relief. We are overburdened with.., a population increasing by' 1000 souls a day, for a large proportion of which we cannot now, and may never be able to, provide work and wage. 'We are convinced that)the country will at • once have 'to devote 'to the object of Empire '<■: settlement and - development a capital sum of, say, £250,000,000. The interest on such an ? investment would be only a small fraction of our yearly expenditure on unemployment; and the capital, unlike that we are spending at present, would be in the end repayable' directly and indirectly by the ' beneficiaries } over a term of years. /With a view to the more effective co-operation .of ' Britain with the Dominions we feel that the Home Government, perhaps through a big and businesslike corporation, should take a larger and more direct share in the practical work of planting settlers in the , new centres and townships to be * created over the water. The transference of population must be on a scale suck._as we have not yet even imagined, if it is to be at- all commensurate with the problems we;have to solve. There is no doubt that unless we establish that permanent "bridge * for emigrants" for which Froude and Carlyle pleaded so powerfully and so vainly 60 years ; ago, Britain will sink more and more into n "shallows and miseries," and will involve the whole : Imperial fabric in her own decline and fall. '• -'\- < •-. THE HUMAN FAMILY. ; . ■IThe most;: wonderful thing that .the world i has ever seen, * says Dr. G. ;P. , Gooch, ;; is J that mighty co-operative achievement of known and unknown men and Women of all races■> and times—the building of our organisationthe result of the common '■■ efforts of «i the human family The first glimmering ■of a perception of the unity of civilisation came in with the ; Roman, Empire. For .a. thousand } years, ' roughly; from St. \\ Augustine )• to Machiavelli, from the fifth anniversary to the - fifteenth, the conception of the unity of civilisation dominated : "Europe." That conception was lost under the double impact of the Renaissance and the Reforma- '' tion : the Renaissance 1 which secularised thought and overthrew the spell of authority; and' the Reformation which broke the religious life of Christendom into two parts. ;■/I/Forv the last four centuries we have lived in an atmosphere from which the conception of world; citizenship has almost- ! entirely disappeared,? to' the unspeakable loss of the ' modern world. •;' I regard the Great War as.' the-' inevitable result and the final disproof, .'■■ the truth and value of narrow-headed and niiTcwminded nationalism, and L; believe that the best /thought and the 'best mind of the day in all countries without exception is turning back to the mediaeval conception of world citizenship, ; brought up to date,; transferred rfrom- a; theological to an ethical foundation, and enlarged until it embraces, at any rate", all the civilised countries of * the world. The. study of the past and the needs of the present both point in the same direction, namely, to get a real, ? , clear, 9 close grip /of this fundamental fact—that we are all members of the human family. 1 [ ? It will take a'very long time / for this conception to work V ■) itself i into the consciousness and/the sub-consciousness ;of statemen, of "the man in the street, and of'the schoolmaster and of -the author of school history; but it has ;to come,,and it will come..: , • ■ - '. r • -.'-••*; '.- ' ', , / / SECURITY- FOR FRANCE. " ' France is on the edge of Europe, exposed to the unknown possibilities of a disturbed and changing continent says the London Times. Her nearest? neighbour .is a powerful nation which has .twice invaded France within living memory, arid whose last attempt was /repelled only by art unparalleled; effort on the part of many peoples. . The intelligence of Germany, her organising ' ability, and the steady increase of her; population • constitute a danger for France as long as the inevitable German expansion 'is pressed, whether from within or from without, into military and aggresive forms.' The fear of German revenge is a real and intelligible fear, which must be dissipated if there is to be : peace ;: in, Europe. All that is thoroughly understood in this country. The occupation of the Ruhr and the Rhinelaiid has riot solved the problem of French/ security any i more, than it has solved the problem of reparations. In certain respects the plans arid methods of Rhineland defence, that wer» unsuccessfully advocated by the French at' the Peace Conference, have now been carried 'out independently by French troops and French civilians. The result has been mainly to intensify and to embitter German national; feeling, and so to ■ give substance to what ; was' always a possible danger. The result has also been to increase French burdens and French / anxieties. The fear that- 1 has to be dissipated id more real than ever and is.more, widely spread. ,But military measures alone are. not sufficient. ",/ They must be supplemented by a continuous effort : to/ establish such relations 'between the peoples as shall steadily diminish the necessity * and the occasions for resorting , to arms. /•', That is the idea \ which .: lies I behind the rather wavering and uncertain British policy of the last few 1 years. • • " ■--■ - , ;< -.'i ■; !».'■.' ''y^-y:!' ; -