NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22004, 10 January 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

HUMANE LEARNING What could humane learning do for men as citizens? asked Mr. John Buchan in an address at the opening of the new Harkness Library at Columbia University, New York. There were four contributions which it might mako. The first was a Bense of proportion, a just perspective, one of the rarest and most precious of human endowments. In Newman's phrase, a university should "supply true principles to popular enthusiasms and fixed aims to popular aspirations." The second contribution of a humane education was a rational humility, in other words, a sense of humour which made us see ourselves in our proper rank in the scale of things. Tho new humility of to-day was a wholesome thing, if it did not degenerate into the "defeatism" which denied the powers of tho human reason. A third contribution was that it fostered the critical spirit and made its possessor what every man should be, a rational revolutionary. Those who defended society must themselves have been sceptics and have raised the doubts and answered them. As a last contribution he suggested what ho called a rational conservatism. Humane learning taught that things -died and must be cleared out of the road, but/ it also taught that all our problems were longdescended. UGLINESS IN MANUFACTURES Modern artists and craftsmen were not less skilled than the artists of any great period, but art seemed to have been shunted on to the wrong line, and instead of being a vital factor in modern life it was merely an idle accomplishment for the leisured few, and artificial, said Mr. Gordon M. Forsyth, in an address to the Royal Society of Arts upon British pottery. There was an urgent need in these days for industrialists to consider the appalling waste of skilled craftsmanship that was taking place in the industrial arts, and to take any legitimate means in their power to stop it. It was a difficult but not impossible task, and there were various methods of attack which ought to be used, but this great problem had to be solved if they were to maintain their place in the world as a great industrial nation. It required no great effort of imagination to realise the full significance and importance of beauty in mass production articles of everyday use. Pottery was a necessity. It was, therefore, a powerful factor in the education and appreciation of beauty of any civilised community. There was no reason why tho very cheapest articles should not be beautiful; on the other hand, there could be no justification or excuse for producing one ugly piece of pottery. Hie mass production of ugliness was a crime against the community, and peisonally ho would have no hesitation in classifying manufacturers of bad art as Public Enemy No. 1. It was hard to understand how some manufacturers could deliberately degrade an ancient and honourable craft. TRUSTEES FOR FREEDOM "One of the reasons why I oppose, and shall continue to oppose as strongly as I can, the Socialist teaching of the present day is this: \ou must remember, when you speak of the Labour Party that it is not purely a workingclass party, with a working-class policy," declared Mr. Stanley Baldwin in a speech in London recently. "Its policy is provided by men who are called 'intellectuals.' They provide the policy, and Labour provides the votes. When they see that policy being put into effect, they think that to do that was what they were elected for. Time alone will show. If you study the writings, speeches and propagandist literature of extreme Socialism, you will find that running through it is what is running thrugh Germany and Russia today; that in order to get our will nothing shall interfere with it, and there shall neither be free will nor free speech. That is the fundamental difference between us Conservatives, and them. That is what we have always got to remember. I shall never fear for this country so long as we preserve those things. With them would perish everything for which we have fought through the whole of our history. The world recognises us to-day, perhaps more than it ever has, as the home of freedom. There is no country, including Russia, where thero are not somewhero lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to tho world to preserve our soul for that." PLANNING OF TRADE Speaking in the House of Commons upon the Government's marketing schemes, Mr. Walter Elliot, Minister of Agriculture, said that the obstacles to international trade were made in other countries before they were made in Britain, and the difficulty of dealing with internatonal trade was enormously accentuated if this was the only free market of tho world. It was impossible for Britain to make itself into a place where all the surpluses all over the world could bo sent to find a market. Unemployment was rising to boundless heights under that system, and thero was general agreement that something should be done. Tho principle of planning trado and some attempt to smooth out the differences in, say, tho pig cycle were pressed on tho Government long before the scheme was put into force. It might bo that they had beep too generous to tho foreigner, and some reorganisation ought to be made by which a greater amount of money was taken out of the pockets of the foreigner and consequently a greater amount given to the people at home. There was much to bo said against interference with privato enterprise, but it was necessary to havo activity within some ordered frame. The difficulty of tho Government —tho difficulty of anybody who tried to walk in tho middle of the road —was that we had to find somo modus vivendi between tho unlimited activity of the nineteenth century and extreme regulations. It would not bo done by pretending that tho nineteenth century would come again. The troubles of the new century were born in many mistakes in that welter of tho century from which they had just emerged. There were forces to-day which, unless they began to organise now, would swamp the order to which they had been accustomed, would completely sweep it away.