NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22353, 26 February 1936, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

LOOKING ON AND LIVING "One of the kindest things you can say of the average man of 1936 is that he is a good gazer," said Mr. C. Richard Lewis, the retiring chairman, in his address at the meeting of the Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools at Portsmouth. "Surely we teachers and our scholars have a gospel that is more heartening than this? When will the day come when we shall have a race of people prepared to live great life rather than to read great fiction; to act great life rather than to crane its neck to pictorial or plastic representation, however wondrous; to make a great epoch by its own great life and creation, rather than to lose itself in contemplation in the hermit cell of a museum. At present great life is confined as always to the few. The rest of us follow and envy and gaze." SHORTER PLAYS The great success of Mr. Noel Coward's recent experiment in London in producing ( three plays in the same evening has naturally caused discussion on the question how far we have got into a groove about our evening amusements, reflects the Listener. Mr. Coward explains in'his programme that the shorter play avoids many of the technical troubles of a three-act affair, and it is undoubtedly true that great numbers of the unsuccessful plays produced every year fail because the dramatists have said everything they had to say by the end of the second, and sometimes of the first, act. The conventional length of two and a-half hours is suitable for many stories and for many forms of entertainment, but there exist little-used possibilities on either side of it. The Chinese are well known to like plays which go on for days and even for weeks. In Spain it used to be a custom for people to see one act of a three or four-act play each night, the whole play forming their week's entertainment. The great advantage was that an hour's entertainment could be made to fit in with dining and conversation, where the full play, as in England to-day, involves a hurried meal in front of it and late hours after it, if it is to be part of a general social occasion. RELIGION AND THE STATE For the first time in American history, a Jewish rabbi was a speaker before the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America, when Rabbi Lozaron, of Baltimore, addressed the bishops in their meeting at Atlantic City. "We are sharers in the great tradition of psalmist and prophet, of Moses and Jesus." said the Rabbi. "But we not only share the tradition, we are bound to defend it. The facts of life to-day challenge that tradition. Chauvinistic nationalism declares religion is the servant of the State. We believe religion is the conscience of the State. Nationalism would build up a bloodcult which divides the peoples; we believe in the brotherhood of all men under God the Father. Nationalism exalts force, uses tyranny and organises the resources and energies of a nation for war and perverts the heart of its youth with hate. Religion proclaims the gospel of justice, peace and love. Nationalism and dictatorship crush the inherent rights and liberties of men and violate the sanctities of the human soul. This battle against the State-cult, blood-cult and war-cult is not a Jewish struggle alone or a Christian struggle alone. These enemies are the enemies of all who believe in God and human freedom." » SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARK Scotland is at last to have her first National Forest Park, writes the Scottish correspondent of the Listener. The implantable portions of the mountain lands belonging to the Forestry Commissioners and the Corporation of Glasgow on the western shore of Loch Long, Argyll, are to be thrown together for this purpose. It is a magnificent stretch of wild country, some 20 miles long and anything from three to six in depth, and it is certain to attract genuine climbers and campers from the South, as well as devotees of the new out-of-doors cult in an overcrowded industrial area. Fears had been expressed that the amenities would attract the litterlout and the ukulele expert, but the director of Glasgow's parks was ablo to say that his experience in Ardgoil, a particularly wild area to be included in the new park, did not by any means justify the apprehension; and it is much that the Forestry Commissioners, with all their fears of fire and responsibility for young trees, are willing to put their trust in the deceny of the bona-fide vagabonds of the new age. And that is surely the supreme justification of the park and the movement it will serve. Glasgow Corporation gtill keeps its ratepayers off the grass in its urban enclosures. But it agreeably seems that the city dweller turned hiker can now bo trusted to behave himself.

REAL MEANING OF LIFE

"You cannot have lived as long as you have, much less can anyone have lived as long as I have, without realising how much disappointment must come to us all, how little we can accomplish of all we hoped to do, how every kind of pleasure is short-lived," said the ex-headmaster of Bedales, Mr. J. H. Badley, in one of his Sunday evening talks with his pupils. "There are times when we are ready to echo the words of the old writer: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'; or the still more bitter French saying: 'Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse' —implying that there is nothing that is not transient, that does not break in one's grasp, and does no bring weariness. That is life without faith; but, happily, we do not always feel like that. Something in us refuses to believe that life is so meaningless a thing as that. At times, when we are really alive, when we are using our powers most fully, whether in bodily activity, pitting our skill and endurance against difficulty and danger, or in activity of the mind, wrestling with some problem and extending our mental grasp, or in those activities of the spirit that are the highest of all, learning more of tho meaning of beauty and love and seeking to bring them into our own lives and the lives of those about us—at these times do wo not grow aware of a reality deeper than the disappointments and failures, deeper than the surface pleasures and distractions, something that gives both i value and purpose to life? This reality many call God."