NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19691, 18 July 1927, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE GENIUS OF ENGLAND. One of the most famous British travellers, Sir Francis Younghusband, has recently published a record of his experiences, in which he presents his considered judgment of the men and the affairs he has encountered during his career. "What does the light of experience show is tho best contribution that we English, here at the heart of the whole British Empire, can make for tho good of mankind ? What special gift is it in our power to offer to the Empire, and through the Empiro to the world ?" he asks iu a concluding chapter. He sees in England "a wondrous beauty which is all her own"—a sweetness that has nothing insipid about it—and predicts that it will come to maturity from that blend of hardihood and tenderness we owe to Christianity. "In the fulness of time thero will como to England a true spiritual genius—one who will embody and express the genius of the whole great world. And ho will be a religious genius of our own, speaking in our own tongue to men of our own day. Ho will do as Jesus did—look into tho heart of things for himself, and from that Divine source of all that is most good and most' lovely and most true draw the inspiration which will make him say and do what will bring refreshment to the souls of men. He will take the ancient Gospel as Shakespeare took some ancient story, and by the fire of his genius impart to it a fresh life and a new meaning. And he will live the life as well as tell the story, and so make England a land of pilgrimage for all the world. Compared with such a ono even tho greatest of the past will be only the preparers of the way. Greater even than Shakespeare or Milton, Fox, Wesley, or Nelson, and English as these to the core,. he will yet be so universal that every other country will claim him as its own. He will speak for all men because he will be speaking out of the mouth of that God which is in every single one of us. This is what the light of experience shows me it should bo the ambition of England to produce. Our special contribution to the world should be one who can instil a divine sweetness into mankind."

THE FORCES OF DESTRUCTION. The doctrine that "force has always ruled human life—and always will" is challenged by Mr. John Galsworthy in an introduction to a collection of essays on Rotary. He contends that' if the world is content to submit to the rule of force it must be prepared for the destruction of humanity. "The last few years have brought' a startling change in the conditions of existence —a change that has not yet been fully realised. Destructive science has gone ahead out of all proportion," ho says. "It is developing so fast that each irresponsible assertion of national rights or interests brings the world appreciably nearer to ruin. Without any doubt whatever, tho powers of destruction are gaining fast on the powers of creation and construction. In the old days a thirty years' war was needed to exhaust a nation; it will soon be (if it is not already) possible to exhaust a nation in a week by tho destruction of its big towns from the air. Tho cpnquest of the air, so jubilantly hailed by the unthinking, may turn out the most sinister event that ever befell us, simply because it came before we were fit for it—fit to act reasonably under the temptation of its fearful possibilities. . . . We have made by our science a monster that will devour us yet, unless by exchanging international thought we can create a general opinion against the new powers of destruction so strong and so unanimous that no nation will care to face -tho force which underlies it."

RESTRAINING INFLUENCES. Mr. Galsworthy considers that Government's alone are powerless to prevent the application of these destructive agencies. "The real key to the future is in the hands of those who provide the means of destruction. Aro scientists (chemists, inventors, engineers) to be Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Japanese, Russians, before they are men, in this matter of the making of destruction ? Are they to be more concerned with the interests of their own countries, or with the interests of the human species ? That has become the question they have to answer now that they have for the first time the future of the human raco within their grasp. . . . Governments and peoples are no longer in charge. Our fato is really in the hands of the three great powers—science, finance and the press. Underneath the showy political surface of things those three great powers aro secretly determining the march of the nations; the world's liopo lies with them; in the possibility of theip being able to institute a sort of craftsman's trusteeship for mankind —a new triple alliance, of science, finance and the press, in service to (he good of mankind at large, with the motto: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.'