NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21911, 21 September 1934, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

EAST MEETS WEST "The devastating effects of the reckless world-wide adoption of the West European principle of nationality stare us in the face to-day." said Professor Arnold J. Toynbee in a paper on "Psychological problems arising from the contact of cultures." Emphasising the problems of the pressure of an alien culture, he said: "The Near Eastern peoples have been led by the modern political dominance and consequent political prestige of Western Europe to scrap their own indigenous political institutions and to substitute our West European nationalism in their place. It is this that explains the havoc that has followed, for when you applv the West European concept of nationality to a region in which the different communities are geographically intermingled and economically independent, and when you equate these communities with our West European nations and teach every one of them that it has a sacred right to possess a sovereign independent national State of its own on the pattern of France or England—then you are really inciting them to sort themselves out geographically by a process of internecine warfare in which all minorities will be evicted or massacred and all economic relations will be pulled to pieces." COLLISION OF CULTURES " This has been the appalling effect in the domain of the old Ottoman Empire during the last 150 years of the radiation of the West European political principle of national self-government divorced from its West European historical and geographical context and applied to a population with an entirely different social heritage," proceeds Professor Toynbee. " The destructiveness of such a process might be thought to be providing its own safeguard. When the child has burned its fingers may we not expect it to stop playing with fire? Why is it, then, that the non-Western peoples in recent times, when once they have embarked upon the course of adopting our Western political institutions, have tended to go on to the bitter end, notwithstanding the terrible sufferings and loss which this course has imposed upon them?" Professor Toynbee's conclusion was that "in our world, in our time, we are in the very early days of a world-wido collision of cultures which will almost certainly have far-off consequences beyond the utmost range of our imagination." EDUCATION FOR LEISURE In opening the Glamorgan Summer School, Dr. George H. Green, of University College, Aberystwyth, took as his subject "Art and Craft in Life and Education." He said that in the changed world of to-day increasing attention would have to be devoted to the education of the people in the right use of leisure. Arts and crafts demanded an essential place in the curriculum, as they related activity to the inner urge to create. People would spend their increasing leisure in various ways. At present in the vast majority of cases they depended on various forms of relaxation, provided by persons and agencies outside themselves. Horse racing was an unproductive method of self-expression, but it was not surprising to see people who led humdrum lives in the great industrial areas turning their thoughts to open spaces, where beautiful animals competed for a prize. Betting, if regarded as a social evil, could not be dealt with by simply making it illegal. It might be possible in the future to devise a means of self-expression so interesting and absorbing that by the side of it betting would appear uninteresting and futile. People who were driven into unprofitable and foolish ways of killing time had never been educated for life; in the business of educating the masses in the future, if they probed deeply enough, they would probably find a very substantial reason for devoting considerable attention to arts and crafts.

THE IRISH QUESTION Nations are often hypnotised by phrases, says Sir Evelyn Wrench in a letter to the Times. In Germany, before the Hitler regime came into power, there was a phrase which was on everyone's lips; the magic phrase was Gleichberechtigung (equality of status). It was largely because the majority of the German people thought that they had not received equal treatment that the Nazi movement came into power. During a recent visit to Ireland two facts impressed me afresh. In Southern Ireland there was a fairly general conviction that the Anglo-Irish Treaty "had been imposed upon the Irish delegates." "The Treaty had been signed under duress." "Ireland had not been a free agent." I was frequently told by Irish leaders that Anglo-Irish relations could not be put on a permanently satisfactory basis till Irishmen were completely free and the last fetter of subservience to England broken. In Ulster, on the other hand, feeling against Southern Ireland had distinctly hardened since a previous visit. So long as Southern Ireland's purpose is to break up the British Commonwealth, Ulster will have no truck with her neighbour. Ulster's wholo economic future is bound up with the British Commonwealth. If Southern Irishmen are realists they will have to recognise that fact. I agree with Mr. Frank MacDermot that a British Declaration that Dominion status implies tho right to secede would have a considerable effect in Southern Ireland. I do not propose to enter upon legal arguments as to the exact implication of the "equality of status" claimed by the Dominions. Certainly many of my French-Canadian and Dutch South African friends consider that, should they desire it, Canada or South Africa, or the other Dominions, have the right to secede. I asked one of the political leaders of South Africa two years ago how many people in the Union would wish to avail themselves of this privilege. He replied, "Just becatise we have the right, 1 do not think 500 would avail themselves of it." Great Britain will never put Anglo-Irish relations on a satisfactory basis by using force. A gesture showing her readiness to treat Ireland as an equal would go a long way toward removing the last stum-bling-block to an understanding.