NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21577, 23 August 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ILLS OF CIVILISATION In an address before the National Peace Congress, Professor Gilbert Murray, said that one of the most extraordinary circumstances in the present age was that so great a number of people who were in no sense alarmists should be saying that civilisation was in danger of coming to a crash. The present age, however, had none of the outward signs of decadence. This generation was sometimes accused of being a weary generation without the strength to carry out its task, but it appeared to him that the world was full of enthusiasm "If it were possible definitely to save the world by some groat sacrifice of life .or happiness by perhaps a thousand people, wo should have a thousand volunteers immediately. Wo have enthusiasm, but our enthusiasms are fighting one against another. To get these, forces co-ordinated and adjusted we must have order, and for that we must have confidence. I do not believe the world is morally on the downgrade. There is more justice, more mercy, and more social conscience than at any former time." The evils from which civilisation was suffering were largely due to mere maladjustment.

STUDY OF FATIGUE Some of the practical bearings of the study of psychology on daily life were discussed by Mr. W. Creswell O'Reilly in a Sydney address. His subject was, ,r Don't bo tired to-morrow." This phrase, ho explained, was said to be used by a South African tribe, and it means that people should not worry unnecessarily, that tho taking of a hopeful view in a set of circumstances assisted in the realisation of a desirable outcome. Psychology was teaching man new methods of work, said Mr. O'Reilly, and was adding to the sum of human happiness. Much of our tiredness was not of the body but of the mind. Though people talk of overwork, probably very few were really overworked in tho physical sense. Sensations of fatigue were due largely to association with worry, with failure to arrange our work properly, or with the fact ot being engaged in work in which our personality seemed to find no natural expression. Mr. O'Reilly recalled that when, during the war, he went to Salisbury Plain with the artillery reinforcements, the troops found the route marches very fatiguing. On the march back, however, as soon as the top ot the hill was reached and all knew that in 10 minutes they could be lying on their bunks with a cup of tea, the tired feeling would be forgotten in refreshment from a psychological source.

THE CHURCH'S CRISIS In a paper read at an Albert Hall meeting held in connection with the centenary of the Oxford Movement, the Rev. Dr. K. E. Kirk, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, referred to the question of the spiritual independence of the Church. "Unless wo take the matter seriously to heart, we are heading straight for disaster," he declared. "The crisis may come at any moment; for my own part, I believe it will come almost certainly in the matter of .sexual morality. The Christian principle of monogamy Avill be flouted, if I read the signs aright, on some spectacular occasion in a manner which we cannot afford to ignore; and the whole question of the Church's right to make her own demands upon her members, and to exercise her own discipline if they refuse to comply, will flare up in a veritable pillar of fire. No Church can speak or act with spiritual authority which truckles to the whims of party politics or accepts its mandates and its limitations from the State. The appalling inability of the Church of England to make up her mind either on doctrinal or on moral issues," he added, "means that she is still barely conscious of herself as the guardian of a sacred deposit, and that she has failed to impress this aspect of her true nature upon many who profess themselves to be Churchmen."

SURGERY AND RESEARCH "At every hand," said Sir Holburt. Waring, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, when opening tho Buckston Brown Surgical Research Farm, "we have need of greater knowledge of the working of the body. For years after the Great War, for example, wo thought that physiologists had provided tho key to the cause and treatment of operational shock. It has been proved that the explanations given were not wholly correct, and we now want ,to know whether such shock is a nervous effect or whether it is caused by chemical changes originating in the damaged tissues. If that knowledge were available—and there is 110 reason why, with sustained effort, it should not be obtained —we should he able to take measures to reduce operational shock very appreciably and so to removo one of the greatest objections to tho surgical method." In tho case of brain operations, Sir Holburt proceeded, [ more exact information was needed as Ito tlio rolo played by different parts of the brain, and as to the effects on personality and health of interfering locally with the blood supply—as when a tumour is removed. "Another very largo field of progress," 110 continued, "is being opened up by increasing knowledge of the work of our nerves. All example of how such knowledge may be quickly applicable is tho prospect of relieving certain forms of facial paralysis which has resulted from the discovery by Sir Charles Ballanco in tho college laboratories that the 'sympathetic' (or unconscious) nervous system can be made to do the work of the 'motor' (or conscious) system, from which it had been thought to be entirely disconnected." Other pressing problems were represented by cases of intestinal in which there was a largely unexplained mortality o? 40 per cent; and ulcers of the stomach and duodenum, cases of which had quadrupled in one large hospital within 10 or 12 years, although they still had no satisfactory explanations either of their cause or of why some perforated and somo did not.