NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19415, 25 August 1926, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE. "The greatest danger of the'times is the rejection of discipline, the refusal to obey ordo'rs, tho demand of the drummer boy to instruct the field-marshal," says the Church Times. "The office boy may become the managing director, but while he is ah office boy he must be content to lick stamps and not' demand to sign cheques. We do not recede one inch from adherence $o the great democratic principle of liberty,' equality and fraternity, but there must bis,a commonsense realisation of the meaning of equality. > Equality of opportunity., equality before the law,'as time goes on. an ever-increasing equality of income, all these things are possible in an ordered society. ■ But the . equality that means the constant repetition of the falsehood that Jack is as good as his master, and the demand that every - man shall do as he likes, is insanity. Discipline, is the note, of every, happy and prosperous community; without discipline stability,is impossible." , • . , , THE USEJS OF TEMPER. That temper may support reason is suggested by a writer in the Daily Chronicle Quoting an old essayist, he says that "of 1 all personal and mental attractions, the two most permanent are undoubtedly smoothness of ; skin and temper—a sort of velvetness of body and mind." Both depend a good deal on our physical digestion both are to some extent natural" gifts; but both can be cultivated. For once that the actions of human, beings are guided by reason,. ninety-and-nine times they are influenced by temper. And it !s only an even temper that allows reason her full dominion. Yet firmness as well as smoothness is requisite to the pert'oct temper, just as beneath the smooth skin there should be firm muscles. Nothing makes more mischief in the world than the kind of amiability which is another name .for weakness. .Temper, in .short, though a bad master, is a valuable servant. Temper without reason is heat without light. But reason without temper is light without heat. Either extreme is inhuman. The best natures blend both, but keep reason always sovereign.THE MIDDLE-CLASS. The grievances of the middle-class are supposed to be peculiarly English, but a passage in a novel by Mr. Basil King suggests that even amid the prosperity of the United States the man halfway between the rich and the poof has a hard row to hoe. Mr. he "was out in no-man's-land between Capita! and -Labour, raked by the guns of both, and enfeebled by its loyalty to law, respectability and religion. Capital and Labour had apparently freed themselves • from these allegiances, or had learned so to manipulate their forces that the allegiances were all the other way. The millions of innocent boobs, perhaps the majority if all . the people in the country, who hadn't thrown over law, respectability and religion, nor twisted them to serve their own ends, could, be stoned, tormented, laughed at, and treated as business foddef. So long as they didn't defend themselves by- force they would remain the world's great goat; and they, would never learn so to defend themselves; ' be driven into the cities every morning and carted out every afternoon; probably, to the end of time; and they would do it for the reason that law, respectability and religion and an instinct for tho' sanctity of duty still meant something in their lives."