NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22209, 9 September 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SOWING FOR THE FUTURE Although the Great War did not completely shatter the world's civilisation, it gave it such a shaking that history in the years to come would show whether or not it had been shaken beyond recovery, said Mr. Stanley Baldwin, speaking at the prize-giving of his old school, Hartlebury. Rfecovery would depend upon the coming generation. " I was speaking to the headmaster of one of our big public schools the other day," Mr. Baldwin went on, "and I said: • . . ' You, just as we politicians, are sowing for the future. You may never get your reward in this life. It may not be until you are dead, but the influence you wielded will come into life.' It is the same with those of us who are in high places in the nation. We try to show the people what we believe to be the right way in the affairs of the world. We may fail completely, but no one can tell in our lifetime . . . the true perspective can only bo obtained through the passage of time."

NEED FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY The Dean of St. Paul's, London, Dr. W. R. Matthews, addressing the World Convention of Churches of Christ at Leicester on " Christian Unity," said the Christian Church was passing through a crisis of almost unparalleled severity. Twenty years hence the civilised world would be either very much more Christian or very much less so. The signs of the times were encouraging, he added. In more places than one the battle seemed to have turned definitely against the Church. In the country the Christian Church was confronted with a paganism which was becoming more definite and selfconscious. The need of some united front, some common witness, some evidence of tho reality of Christian brotherhood became daily more pressing. One of the chief obstacles to the presentation of tho case for Christianity to-day was that Christians appeared to the outsider to be hopelessly divided among themselves, and even spending more energy in controverting one another than in converting the world. They would never make much progress until the laity thought imperially instead of parochially and sectionally, and fixed their thoughts on the world-wide empire of Christ.

OUTDOOR ADVERTISING The disfigurement of the landscape by advertising hoardings and means to check this modern offence to natural beauty are discussed by the Listener. It remarks that it is a matter for discretion and good taste what shall be allowed to appeal. And just as no one may put up a building without getting the plans passed, so a preview of projected advertising by local authorities is the obvious solution. The trouble remains that county and borough councils are not primarily elected for their good taste. There is a growing recognition that bad advertisements spoil the attractions of places and diminish the number of visitors. But some of the most important parts of England, from the point of view of preserving the countryside, are places which are passed through by people who will spend their money somewhere else. The authorities, in rural areas thus traversed. naturally sympathise with the desire of their farmer constituents to be allowed to sell permissions for signs in their fields. It is not enough for the public to rely on local authorities to look at the matter from a national point of view. But advertisers themselves are becoming increasingly aware that it is disastrous for them to put up signs which make people talk of them as " vandals." DECLINE OF FOLK DANCING

The recent International Folk Dance Festival in London prompted the Listener to raise the questions as to what it is in "the advance of civilisation" that kills folk dancing, and whether any conscious attempts at revival can ever restore its spontaneity. The need and the desire for it, adds the Listener, is still present, as any English city on a New Year's Eve or Jubilee night will show. People are all ready to dance, but they do not know Kow. Except for isolated local survivals, the only genuine relic of a folk dance that remains in the British Isles is the ritual of "Aukl Lang Syne." For the rest wo are reduced to clumsy fox-trotting on asphalt pavements, which everybody feels and knows to be inadequate. All sorts of sociological explanations are from time to time elaborated for the decay of tho folk dance, but it is just possible that the real reason lies simply in the popularisation of the polished floor. Stops learned and practised with pride in the "Palais de Danse" are useless on village greens and city squares, and the occasions for public merrymaking are too few tb keep the older art alive. NEW DEAL IN AGRICULTURE Britain's new deal in agriculture was discussed in a recent interview given by Mr. 0. S. Orwin, director of the Agricultural Economics Institute at Oxford. "I'm not quite happy about it; wo have rushed into things," ho began. "We have embarked upon a programme tftfore deciding whether it is the best we could have chosen. Mv own opinion is that in seoking to help farming, tho first step of all should have been to consider, in consultation with thoso best fitted to decide, what the country needs. Are we to concentrate upon pcrishablo and luxury products and leave out wheat and sugar, save where they can be produced without State assistance? A commission of inquiry would have taken into consideration the claims of our merchant shipping, our foreign trade, and our foreign creditors, the political situation, the need for self-support and tho measure of that need. When the best minds had felt able to formulate definite conclusions we might have gone ahead, pointing to the foundations on which our decisions rest, and so giving all men to understand that the country's agricultural policy is not ruled either by a party's hunger for votes or the claims, modest or extravagant, of any section of tho community. It is perfectly easy to state a case for home production, it is not much more difficult to state a case for the importation of nearly everything wo consume. My criticism of present methods is that they aro not founded upon an open examination of existing conditions undertaken with tho single aim of doing what is best for Great Britain."