NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19470, 28 October 1926, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE FUTURE OF ZIONISM. "The Jew has learned to survive under the worst, conditions. The question yet to be answered is whether, after so long, he will he able to adjust himself to conditions in which his existence will not be the result of a mere reaction to an oppressive and hostile environment, but in which it must depend on his own will and decision," savs Mr. J. W. Wise, in reviewing in the Century Magazine the return of Jewish civilisation to Palestine. "The epic story of the new Palestine will some day be written. The inflexible purpose and will of the Jewish pioneers of the first decade, their persistence in the face of every hardship, their courage in meeting every danger, 5 these will some day be recounted. The 3 land has been made healthful. Palestine t is no longer a plague-spot. Hundreds of colonies have been established, where Jewish men and women are learning to 3 cultivate the land and make it bear - fruit. At least one large city has been > founded, the city of Tel-Aviv. Schools r and hospitals have been built throughout the land. A common language, the 5 ancient Hebrew tongue, has been revived. I And perhaps most significant of all, a t great Hebrew University has been estab- : lished. There has come into the lives of those Jews who go there to live a new beauty and a hew dignity. There is a ' new light in their eyes, a new soup in 5 their hearts. And as they go they seem ; to be touched by a high sense of covac- , cration. The work which they have undertaken is not for them alone. They are.laying the corner-stone of the new k structure of Jewish life. . . When once t this new energy causes itself to be felt f outside of Palestine, it will affect and alter the course of Jewish life throughout the world. Imperceptibly at first perhaps, but with increasing intensity, ' the character of the new Jewish life in Palestine will permeate and colour the r quality of all Jewish life. Not that t the Jew of Berlin or London or New York will ever accept or even adopt the stand--5 ards or customs of Jewish lifo in Pales- - tine. That that will come to pass is indeed unlikely. But the consciousness that, in one part of the world at least, there is a Jewish way of life, that there does exist a people the essence of whose > being is as distinctively Jewish as that - of his neighbours is distinctively teutonic L or Anglo-Saxon, cannot but affect the Jew everywhere." b CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAY. Canada has two railway systems—the * Canadian Pacific Railway, which is the - largest private system in the world, and . the Canadian National Railway, which is the largest Government-owned railway ! in the world (possibly with the exception of Germany). Reviewing the pres- " ent results of nationalising the latter ) system, Mr. Nugent Cloughen says, in l tiro Empire Review, that, as years rgo the remarkable achievements of . Sir Henry Thornton in creating a great 5 system out of what may be considered ' as chaos will be appreciated and full b credit given. He is a man of outstandj ing ability and one of very few who could successfully face the great problem that has been placed before him. The economies introduced and improved 5 operation, together with careful and tact--1 ful management, have been followed . with a success that many pessimists would have considered impossible. Is this a triumph for nationalisation ? It i would more appear to be a triumph for • individuals —two individuals. The Prime I Minister, heedless of political considera- . tion, was thoughtful only of reducing the liabilities in connection with the National line with which the Government found itself burdened. Realising ; that such a national trust must bo a i sound business organisation, self-sup-j porting, and guarded from the parasitic ! attacks of certain sections' of political ) followers whose narrow views could not - spread beyond the limits of personal j {privileges, he determined to obtain the ; man—the railway man. Such a railway l leader would have to bo capable of : handling a great trust and running the i railway as a railway and not as a politi- [ i cal leech withdrawing the national blood > supplied from other organs of the Govern- ■ ] merit. Such a man was founti in Sir Henry : Thornton. Having acquired Sir Henry , 1 for the Dominion, Mr. Mackenzie King , wisely handed over the railway to him 1 > and "left, him unfettered by conditions, ■ : and firmly placed himself' between the i railway organisation and the outside in- 1 1 flnences thai would wish to incapacitate "the people'-a line"- and reader it a 1