NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21982, 13 December 1934, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

EDUCATION AND PEACE One of the gravest causes of anxiety for the future of Europe is the kind of education given to the j'oung in certain important countries, says Professor Gilbert Murray in the Times. In 1926, on the motion of the British delegate Dame Edith Lyttelton—the Assembly passed unanimously a resolution recommending that members of the League should seo that their boys and girls should all receive some instruction in the work and aims of the League of Nations" and be taught to regard international co-operation as the normal method of world government." The resolution was repeated and made more specific in two subsequent years;, was entrusted to a special committee to supervise; and was well carried out in a number of countries. A great deal of ancillary work had to bo done and was done; handbooks on this new subject were written; old history textbooks were revised and made more objective in almost every part of the world. Much the same may be said of France and —in the time of Dr. Becker s tenure of office —of Prussia, as well as many other countries. The younger generation were, on the whole, being trained as citizens of a largo ci\ ilisation in which co-operation should take the place of war. As we all know, this state of things has been violently changed in Germany, where the new system —so far as it is intelligible to an outsider —appears to glorify all that is dangerous in international relations, to suppress and persecute all that makes for objective truth and mutual understanding. As to Italy, ono must make very large allowances for the exuberances of rhetoric, but Signoi Mussolini's latest remarks on the education of the young in militarism and bayonet-drill are not reassuring. In another important nation a university professor, whom I asked whether the students who camo to him had been trained in citizenship, replied:— "They are trained to be mad dogs." And, of course, rabies is catching. The neighbours of all these countries tend to grow frightened and angry, and begin to think of war rather than peace."

A METHOD The danger ia obvious, continues Professor Murray. What can be done to meet it? The easiest and worst course is to accept defeat, to meet threats with threats; to tell our young people that "foreigners" do not understand peace, and that war is—in the silly phrase—"inevitable." The best course would bo to give strength and mutual confidence to the forces of peace —which have tho overwhelming majority of nations and human beings on their side —by consultation and steady co-operation. After all the "mad-dog" educationists are not only in the wrong; they are in a very small minority, and probably will not last. It would be a mistake to be too much afraid of them. What is wanted, I think, is a small visiting committee rather like the International Committees of Health Officers whose visits to various countries have done so much to raise the standard of public health throughout Europe. A committee of three or five persons of some experience should first visit tiiose countries where the technique of League education —if I may use a shorthand phrase—has been successfully mastered; then they should be ready to accept invitations to visit the education authorities in any nations that might invite them, to consujt with them, explain what is done elsewhere and give advice. I am sure there would be a demand for such advice. Two Ministers —one from an eastern European country, one from an Asiatichave told me that for their peoples it would be a godsend. The nations which do not wish for it need not ask for it. The others would acquire a feeling of solidarity and mutual confidence in the cause of peace, which might not only obviate the particular danger I am now considering, but might prove to be one of those stabilising influences which the world so markedly needs. EMPIRE CENTRAL BANKS Referring to a lecture by Sir Josiah Stamp on Central Banking as an Imperial factor, the Times says:—The main thesis of his "discourse was the necessity for developing financial cooperation within the Empire as an indispensable element of Imperial economic policy, since finance and trade are inseparably connected. Until quite recently, it has often almost unconsciously been assumed that finance and commerce are separate departments, and indeed in the pre-war world with its "automatic" gold standard this assumption .was not unreasonable. But to-day in a world of fluctuating currencies and unstable exchanges tho financial factor is all-important, because it exercises a vital influence upon the direction, and volume of trade between the different countries of the world. If Empire trade is to develop, it will be necessary, therefore, to evolve tome community of policy between tho monetary aijthorities of its constituent parts. In the working out of this monetary cQ-operation tho central banks of the Empire are obviously destined to play a leading part. Within recent years the countries comprising the British Empire have, one after another, s«t up central banks of their own, and there now exists a chain of these credit institutions which embraces Great Britain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada. In several of these countries the creation of a central bank, which should really be regarded as the hallmark of financial maturity, has been greeted with some suspicion, prompted by tho fear of dictation from th« Mother Country. Such fear, as Sir Josiah Stamp rightly pointed out, is really groundless. It is fully realised in London that tho first consideration of each of these now central banks must always be the interest of its own country. But if the Empire is to develop a successful system of financial co-operation—such as was envisaged, for example, in tho monetary resolution framed by tho Empire delegates at the World Economic Conference last year—it is clear that sectional interests in each of its constituent parts must in sonic degree be subordinated to those of tho Empire as a whole. In organising these common interests, finance must take its share; and not the least important function of the central banks will bo to promote Imperial economic interests by working out a policy of monetary co-operation.