EXUBERANT STUDENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19177, 17 November 1925, Page 9

EXUBERANT STUDENTS.

MR. BALDWIN CHAFFED.

POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. LONDON, Nov. 7. Exuberant students at Edinburgh University gave a riotous greeting to the Prirno Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, and played practical jokes throughout his Rectorial address. Girl students joined in, using pea-shooters and throwing bushels of Brussels sprouts from the gallery. Much amusement was caused when a string of cardboard pigs moved across the platform, this being iri reference to Mr. Baldwin's keen interest in stock breeding. When the Prime Minister was making a solemn peroration about truth in politics the audience was convulsed by an enormous briar pipe being lowered from the ceiling. Mr. Baldwin's speech betokened elaborate preparation. It included quotations from Socrates, Grotius, Goethe, Spinoza, Beranger, H. G. Wells, Nurse Cavell, Bentharn, Kipling, Locke, Mill, Lord Acton and Machiavelli.

Nowhere was there a higher standard of commercial honesty than in Britain, said ill'. Baldwin, but a different standard existed in politics, primarily because ever since States began they had depended on force for safety.

" Further, democracy is government by talk," he continued. " Although a political audience is not dishonest, it is imperfectly prepared to follow a close argument. It is therefore easy to understand why a speaker who is endeavouring to make a profound impression circulates promises which cannot be cashed."

Socrates was the Athenian philosopher whose teachings are expounded in the dialogues of Plato. Hugo Grotius, a 17th century Dutch thinker, by his work on " War and Peace," founded modern international law. " Faust," the masterpiece of Goethe, greatest of German poets, is part of the world's culture. The daring pantheistic speculations of Spinoza, the mediaeval Jew, have many exponents to-day. Beranger's lyrics, especially those which celebrate the "Napoleonic Legend," are beloved by the French people. Jeremy Benthain, economist and jurist, worked for prisons and other social reforms. By his famous " Essay-on the Human Understanding," John Locke, the 17th century thinker, paved the way for modern " empiricism " and materialism. John Stuart Mill, the Victorian . philosopher-logician, was an exponent of the French " positivist," Auguste Comte. He did much for the emancipation of women, and is identified with Utilitarianism. Lord Acton was the British historian who planned the Cambridge Modern History. Machiavelli, the Renaissance Florentine, was frank'enough to expound, in "The Prince," maxims of statecraft which politicians often follow, and always disavow.