NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22046, 28 February 1935, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FAITH AND REASON "Religious truth is not alone in being incapable of scientific verification by experiment. We cannot prove the facts of history by experiment; they cannot be repeated to satisfy our scrutiny," said Dr. Pollock, Bishop of Norwich, in addressing the Islington Clerical Conference. " To-day big men of science take up a different attitude. They give more freedom; they say that the doctrine of God is no part of their special area of investigation. God may be behind all the facts they disclose, or these facts may point forward to God. They do not dogmatise on che subject; they leave it to others, to other students, the students of things of God. Sbme of them possibly go further and catch a glimpse of Personality behind creation. We may pause here to express our thankfulness for this change, which has cleared away difficulties from the path of many seekers after God. When we still meet elderly people who adopt the discarded view of the antagonistic relations between science and religion, or we find it now filtering down in shallow, sceptical writings to uneducated minds, we knoTy that those who are infected with such bygone opinions, however clever and bold they may think themselves to bo, are really behind the times. It is a Victorian phase. A CHANGE OF TEMPER "The great mark of our time is the collapse of the humanistic doctrine of man," declared Dr. John Baillie, the newly appointed professor of divinity to the University of Edinburgh and New College, in his inaugural lecture. "This is why," he continued, "our time has been characterised as the end of the Renaissance. Humanism is more and more giving place to naturalism. The doctrine of Progress, unquestioned in the nineteenth century, is now suspect, and all the intellectuals are laughing at it. The centuries behind us were centuries of great faith in human nature, but nothing is so characteristic of our time as just loss of faith in human nature. That is the real secret of the decline of liberal democracy. Man is no longer trusted. And this change of temper can as well be illustrated from the theological and philosophical movements of our time as from the movements in the political field. Our ethics have to be rethought, and also our psychology and pedagogy. Tho ethical ideal can no longer be envisaged as the development of our own creative personalities —as 'self-realisation' or 'self-expression.' The task before .the world to-day," he concluded, "is the recovery of faith in man on the basis of faith in God."

EUROPEAN AIR TRANSPORT German air transport development measured in terms of .miles flown, passengers carried, and total weights of air-borne goods and mails, ranks next to that or the United States and first in Europe, asserts Brigadier-General P. R. C. Groves, formerly Director of Flying Operations at the British Air Ministry, writing in the Observer, London. At the end of 1933 the mileage of air routes operated by the regular air transport of the four principal European States and Holland, together with the numbers of aircraft employed, were:—

Total Number Air Route of Aircraft Mileage, in Operation Germany .. 25,196 172 France .. .. 21,450 134 Holland .. 13,225 42 Great Britain . . 13,709 23 Italy . . . . 11,360 ' 77

The aircraft figures do not include reserve machines. It should be noted that the. average horse-power of British air liners is higher, and their average carrying capacity greater, than that of the other countries mentioned. The extent of Germany's lead may be more accurately gauged by the following facts. In 1933 the mileage flown by her commercial aircraft on regular services was one-tenth greater than that of the French, and two and a-half times that of the British. They carried twice as many passengers as the French and 28 per cent more than the British. Their cargo tonnage in goods and mails totalled slightly more than the French, but twice that of the British. GREY AND THE GREAT WAR As Foreign Secretary in 1914, Sir Edward Grey is often blamed for not warning' Austria and Germany that Avar with Russia and France would involve war wjth Great Britain. Why ho did not is brought out by Sir.. J. L. Hammond in a review in the Observer, London, of "British Documents on the Origin of the War." This volume shows clearly enough why Grey hesitated to threaten Austria and Germany, writes Mr. Hammond. It is often said now that if he had told Germany and Austria early in the proceedings that the British Government would enter the war if it came, he would have saved the peace of the world. These pages show clearly why Grey did not take that view. For he had kept the peace in 1913 (after the Balkan Wars) by just the opposite method. Both Russia and France sounded him at that time, and it is plain that if Russia had had the slightest encouragement, war would have come then. Ho had kept the peace by joining with Germany in restraining Russia and Austria-Hungary. And if Germany had co-operated with Grey at that time in averting war Russia had given him every reason for mistrusting both her judgment and her temper. Grey was not a man whoso mind moved rapidly from one view to another, and the impression that these events must have left on him was that there was great danger in encouraging Russia, and considerable hope that Germany would act in 1914 as sho had acted in 1913. About Russia he was clearly right. Thus the very success of the London Conference of 1913 was a source of danger, for it created a false confidence. War had been averted, and Europe breathed again. Grey let the London Conference break up in August, 1913; and trusted to his new effort to improve British relations with Germany for keeping the peace of the world. But the real danger was still in South Eastern Europe, and with the London Conference there disappeared, as it proved, the last opportunity of composing or controlling—that explosive world. So the historian may hold that the cause of peace was lost not in 1914, but in 1913, not in the hour of Grey's disappointment, but in the hour of his triumph.