NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21273, 29 August 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

BIRTH CONTROL In a paper read before the Maternity and Child Welfare Section of the annual congress of tlie Royal Sanitary Institute, Sir Thomas Horder said that birth control ■was the most practical measure of eugenics available. Fundamentalists believed it was wrong to interfere with Nature, but it was too late in the course of evolution to revive these old ideas. He regarded indiscriminate child-bearing as a disease of the body-politic. Mr. Harold Chappie, senior obstetric surgeon at Guy's Hospital, said they were often accused of ridiculous things. One was that the object of the birth control movement was to make vice easy. It was an intensely serious movement, and no such intention was ever meant or implied. Half his outpatients at Guy's would disappear, he said, under a sane system of birth control. Those who worked in big hospitals were tired of dealing with the wreckage of humanity. They wanted to prevent the occurrence of those wrecks. They regarded it as a piece of impertinent interference that those who wished to make use of those measures sholild be prevented from doing so by those who did not hold their views. IRISH AMERICANS In a review of the Earl of Midleton's book " Ireland —Dupe or Heroine" in the Morning Post, Mr. Lan Colvin writes:— Lord Midleton, corning down to times closer at hand, describes the evil influence of the American Irish, who always have looked on Ireland as a cockpit, and took the opportunity given by the war to organise the 1916 Rebellion. He thinks that Lord Kitchener handled recruiting in Ireland ignorantly and tactlessly, and holds that Asquith made a capital mistake when he rushed across to Ireland and interviewed the rebels in 1916. With the succession of Lloyd George as Prime Minister, a still worse mistake was made: " Irish policy was shaped to meet American opinion." Lord Midleton is scathing in his description of the surrenders made by Mr. Lloyd George in the vain endeavour to conciliate the Irish American and the American Senate. For example: In 1918, three Americans, Messrs. Walsh, Dunne and Ryan, with some sort of encouragement from President Wilson himself, persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to sanction their visiting Ireland, where under the name of the American Commission of Irish Independence, representing 20,000,000 of people, they visited a number of towns, made reckless speeches, advocated an Irish Republic, and on one or two occasions, lauded the Easter Week Rebellion in 1916. Murderers "paid and organised in America" kept' the horrid fires of civil war alight. It is not a pleasant story, and Lord Midleton, whose friends were murdered, may be excused for his bitterness. His censures fall on a good many shoulders; but Ireland herself has a fair share of the blame. As Pope Benedict said, " What Ireland lacks is humility." " The protest of the Irish penitent who assured the confessor that her good deeds were such that the Almighty was heavily in her debt, typifies the attitude of Irishmen to their rulers and of Ireland to the world; but a people who have no oversea Government to blame, no oppressive landlords, no taxes, except of their own inspiration, and have complete immunity from past liabilities and present control, will be judged by hard facts without much sympathy." THE CHURCHES AND PEACE The eighth National Minority Congress in Vienna discussed the problem of the Churches in their relation to nationalities. Lord Dickinson, as honorary secretary of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, sent a message in which he referred to the resolutions already adopted by the World Alliance on various occasions, and concluded:—"lf the Churches would loyally and universally undertake the task of bringing about good and friendly relations between the nations the complaints of the minorities to the League of Nations would automatically cease and many causes of political unrest would disappear. The States now split up and weakened by the presence within their borders of groups of men of different race or religion would find that with their minorities now fully content their relations with other States would be improved : and they would indeed gain strength through this fact: the minorites would become a political cement by which the whole fabric of Europe might be strengthened. It is both a noble and a practical task that wc ask the Churches to undertake, and it is one strictly within their competence and in accord with their divine mission. Peace on earth is impossible so long as justice is, denied to the least of God's children. At a moment whenmen's hearts are failing them because they have 'put trust in riches that, are fast disappearing, it is for those who profess to havo built their house upon a rock to show what justice and truth and love can do to restore the ' world's prosperity and peace." The 1 congress adopted a resolution which stated, that the maintenance and free development of nationalities are absolutely' in conformity with the teaching and fundamental principles of the Churches. The congress observed with regret that efforts hava been and are still being made in different parts of Europe to influence the activity of the Churches in a spirit unfavourable to nationalities.