NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20243, 1 May 1929, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A NATION DISARMED. " In discussions about war it sometimes occurs to someone to raise tho question of what would happen if a great country gave up its armed forces and tried nonresistance. And the question is usually put as a very fanciful, and far-fetched speculation, with tho implication that, of couse, no country ever has exposed itsalf or ever could in that way to the invador," writes Mr. Norman Angell in Foreign Affairs. " And- yet in our modern world this last ten years or moro wo have before our eyes the example of a country, possessing vast industrial riches, highly organised, daily producing great wealth, which has been disarmed, which is surrounded by neighbours all of whom are so much more powerful that if they care to invade her—as the French did but a year or two ago—non-resistance is necessarily applied because, speaking in practical terms, the country is unarmed. And yet, is German wealth more markedly insecure than in such highly armed States as, say, Poland, Italy, Czecho-Slovakia ? Has her defencelessness prevented industrial and social development this last ten years 1 Detached observers of some authority like Mr. Parker Gilbert say that German economic renaissance since the war chaos has been greater than that of any other nation whatsoever, save alone America." ICELAND'S PARLIAMENT. " Far up in the North Sea a little country, seldom heard of as a political entity, has to its credit a Parliament dating back a full millennium," says the American Review of Reviews. "It is Iceland. Since 1918 this little nation has been acknowledged a sovereign state, united with Denmark only through the person of King Christian X. This has given new responsibility to the veneraable Althing which, in spite of changes in form and functions from time to time, presents a historical continuity through ten centuries. It is this fact, perhaps more than any other, that impels Icelanders to work for complete independence from the mother country. The present treaty with Denmark remains in force until 1940, but as it is, relations between Denmark and Iceland are far -more satisfactory than formerly when the country was governed from tho Danish capital as a colony. As for the Althing, Professor Hermannsson says that its establishment in 930 ' is one of the most instructive and interesting phenomena in the history of the Middle Ages, and gives us an uncommonly good insight into the organisation and workings of a genuine Germanic state.' And James Bryce once wrote • that it was ' one of the very few which did not grow up imperceptibly and from a very small beginning, but was formally and on set purpose established by tho deliberate agreement of independent groups of men seeking to attain the common end of order and. justice.' " THE HISTORIAN'S ART. "A great history is a great work of art," says Professor C. A. Beard, in a review of Dr. Wingfield-Stratford's "His- ! tory of British Civilisation." "Like a j true work of art, a great history is tho fruit of long and patient study and discipline. But anatomy and physiology, patience and study cannot alone make great history any- more than they can produce an immortal painting. The historian must select the facts lie is to record, decide to whom they are important. For him the bold outline of the past is no doubt fixed by a certain structure of events as they actuA'y were, moro or less vaguely understood, just as the general form of a sculpture is determined by the human figure which it portrays. By his emphasis, his shades, Iris management of details, his contours, his nuances, his wizardry in giving vigour to lip and eye, the historian makes his structure live for thoso for whom he is writing in tho age. for which he is writing. Ilis work is to be judged, therefore, not. by mere accuracy in detail, but by the excellence of the,general structure and by tho pleasure it gives to tho reader to whom it is directed. A great history is also a. creative force, pushing forward the stream of tendency in which it floats. It is for this reason that the widening out of historical conceptions beyond tho boundaries of war and politics gives hope to civilised persons and makes a promise for tomorrow."

SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE. "Thoso who read with attention the utterances of modern physicists may havo been faintly surprised by a nolo of almost millennial exaltation that somotimes creeps into their statements," says Mr. Middleton Murray in tlie New Adelphi. "They seem half inclined to think that they are on the verge of discovering tho secret of tho universe; and tho earnest but bewildered public which follows them afar is ready to turn this inclination into conviction. . . . Quito literally, tho physical secret of tho universe, if it could bo discovered —in fact, the notion of such a discovery is meaningless—would bo useless to us; for to the puro intelligence which alono can contemplate tho puro mathematical dialectic in which modern physics culminates, tho useful is not a relevant category, and in so far as that mathematical, dialectic has practical consequences—as, for example, if it enabled us to liberate and control tho energy of tho atom—thoso practical consequences would merely enlarge the field of possible problems for. man as a moral being. Morality would bo confronted with new problems, though fortunately not with problems of a now kind. Tho secret of the universe is a silly phrase; but if it bo taken in its common implication as. meaning some knowledge" of universal application by knowing « which man will find the fundamental problems of life simplified or solved, the secret of the universe is necessarily to be sought in morality—and, for most of those who are likely to occupy themselves with the problem at the present time, in a morality purified of traditional superstition."