NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22224, 26 September 1935, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE PATRIOTS DECALOGUE Dr. Daniel Marsh, president of Boston University, has worked out ten commandments for patriots, which he announced in dealing with the subject "The Patriotism of a Mature Mind," as follows:—(1) Thou shalt train each new generation to put only good and worthy men into positions of power, for nothing endangers the verv osponco of power so much as its unmerited bestowal. (2) Thou shnlt train each new generation to enact just and equal laws, for it is by law that individual conduct is socially controlled. (3) Thou shalt train each new generation to enforce the laws upon all alike, without fear or favour, and without delay, for delay causes fermentation of unholy propaganda and favouritism tips the scales of justice. (4) Thou shalt train each new generation to reverence and obey all. laws as the political religion of the nation. (5) Thou shalt train each new generation to think straight and accurately, so that mob psychology may not be confounded with enlightened public opinion, nor licence taken for liberty. (6) Thou shalt train each new generation to appreciate solid attainments of national character. (7) Thou shalt train each new generation to be tolerant of progressive change, for the surest way to avoid revolution is to encourage evolution. (8) Thou shalt not glorify war. (9) Thou shalt train each new generation to overcome fear-. (10) Thou shalt develop an intelligent and vital patriotism that passes on from a narrow nationalism to the higher patriotism of a world brotherhood.

WEATHER AND ECONOMICS In the conversational use of the weather, which feeds on the day-to-day signs obvious to the plain man, it is easy to forget how far meteorology has advanced toward the status of an important science, remarks the Times. It is not so long since, even for the seafarer, that the study of the weather was a matter of local and private observation; but now the services of the professional meteorologist are in continuous demand in this as well as in other fields. Applied meteorology is an essential condition of air navigation, and its possible use in countries of large-scale crop cultivation is only just at a beginning. When the opportunities of wireless are fully utilised, there is no doubt that a weather service will be a matter of course in many activities which are still at the mercy of atmospheric or climatic vagaries. Some idea of the scope of these future functions is to be had from the proceedings of the conference of Empire meteorologists which closed this week in London. The conference looked forward to a scheme for a chain of meteorological stations along the Empire air routes to Australia and South Africa, as a necessary adjunct to the day and night flying which may soon become the rule on the Empire services. It. discuosed the methods now coming into prominence for extending the field of meteorological observations to the upper atmosphere. It referred, though with caution, to the hope that experiments now being made in long-range and seasonal forecasts for farmers might eventually lead to a service of economic importance.

MORE HOPE FOR THE DEAF Blind people call forth the immediate sympathy of their fellow-men; but for some curious psychological reason the deaf receive much less consideration, notes the Listener. They even arouse in people a largely unreasonable feeling of irritation, which is a great aggravation of their misfortune. Hitherto most of what has been done to mitigate their handicap has taken the form of instruction in lip-reading, and teaching deaf people to speak. Of recent years, however, the development of wireless has greatly stimulated the scientific investigation of sound and hearing, and provided new instruments, both for testing and for helping the deaf to hear. It is possible now to detect impaired hearing in school children at an early stage; and so to start treatment soon enough for a reasonable chance of success. Interesting work has also been done with children in special schools for the deaf and hard of hearing. Here the new electrical instruments can be used to amplify sound in such a way as to make it audible even to very imperfect ears. Children, and occasionally adults, who up to the time of testing were considered stone deaf, have been able to hear for the first time. All this work is a beginning, still largely experimental; but the next few years should see a large extension of the campaign to lower the incidence in the community of an affliction which is moro isolating and in some ways sadder even than blindness.

COMMUNISM AND NAZISM Almost every law lately passed in Russia or Germany has tended to bring the two countries more nearly to the common pattern, says the Times. Russia's main contribution toward this pattern has been in her steady progress toward a system based on nationalism, State capitalism, and a partnership between peasants and town workers —a system hard to reconcile with the old slogans of Workers of the World, Communist Equality, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but bearing a sharp resemblance to many features of the Third Reich. Germany's contribution has been chiefly in the increasing encroachments on personal liberty, the substitution of propaganda for opinion, the subservience of justico to Stato needs, and the organisation of a great part of industry and public works on a military basis; all changes recent in Germany, but of old standing under the Soviet. To see the proof being worked out week by week js startling. For example, when General Goering declares that justice must be guided solely by State interests, and when Dr. Frank, Reich Commissioner for Justice, states "the Nazi unity of philosophy must not be challenged by anyone," they merely echo almost to the word the declaration of Krylenko, Soviet Commissar for Justico, that "every Judge must remember that his decisions are in'tended to promote nothing but the prevailing policy of the State"; and also Lenin's terse ruling, "The party is not a debating society." In both countries propaganda and secret police, whether G.P.U. or Gestapo, ensure that no heretical discussion openly takes place, that there shall be no opposition party.