NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22355, 28 February 1936, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

WHERE DECEIT IS VAIN "Whatever else the acceptance of God may mean in our lives, this it must mean without a doubt: there is a Being —a Something, call It what you will —to whom it is impossible to lie," writes Miss Cicely Hamilton in her book, "Life Errant." Of none among men can that magnificent 'impossible' be said. Which among us, however desirous of honesty, does not practise petty subterfuge even to his friends? and —what matters more —does not practise it in flattery to himself? But to lift up your heart to God, even for a moment, is to place yourself, for that moment, in a Presence that annihilates deceit. "Thou, God, seest me," as in very truth I am, as no man on earth has ever Been me. JEWS' PLACE IN WORLD In the course of an address on "The Place of the Jew in the World" Rabbi i Israel Abrahams, of the Manchester j Great Synagogue, said that there were i Eastern and Western Jews, but that ! pre-eminently the Jew was Western by j virtue of his religion, cultural and : spiritual contributions to- the building j of modern civilisation. No description of i the Jew's place in the world could j ignore the aspect of his interminable • suffering. Because of his defencelessness he was the eternal scapegoat. Political anti-Semitism was nothing less than a barefaced attempt to make political capital out of the ignorance and prejudice with which the Jew was so widely regarded, and to punish tho Jewish whipping-boy for the failures and misdeeds of political parties. As for the future, the Jew should strive to attain two aims. He should seek to acquire for himself a home which would be a refuge in times of stress and would enable him to develop his natural cultural genius. He should also unite with men of good faith in every country to remove the rule of force, "the greatest cause of human suffering." SENSE AS WELL AS SOUND They say that we can create poetry out of words chosen entirely for their beautiful sound and vague emotional suggestions, writes Mr. David Daiches in his book "The Place of Meaning in Poetry," a book whose argument should help to correct some extreme tendencies in modern poetry. Some have even maintained, says the author, that the poet ignores the intellectual meaning of words. Now, it would seem, prima facie, a silly thing for a poet to throw overboard an element in his medium which contributes so largely to its richness and effectiveness, and to those who say that a poet should concern himself merely with the sound or symbolic value of words we can only answer that, looking at the question in an elementary arithmetical way, it seems clear that he should not so pauperise himself. And we must ask these critics to produce empirical proof that a poet who uses a thus denuded medium can. create great poetry with it. Has it, in fact, been done? We have only to turn to a comprehensive anthology of English (or for that matter European) poetry to realise that all the recognised poetry which has been produced and preserved throughout our literary history uses as its medium not the secondary aspects of language alone .but these in conjunction with the intellectual meaning of words. AUSTRALIA'S TURN When the Council of tho League of Nations met at Geneva last month it had for its president Mr. S. M. Bruce, a former Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth and now its High Commissioner in London. Thus, comments the Manchester Guardian., for the first time a statesman from the new lands in the Antipodes presides at Geneva, and the wise policy on which the Assembly decided in 1926 of spreading membership of the council and tenure of its chief office as widely as possible among the nations has a notable example. The Council of tho League, in addition to its permanent members (now reduced by the defection of Germany and Japan to four), is composed of 10 non-permanent members. Three of these are elected each yeqr, for three years. None at the end of that term may be elected again until three years have passed without the assent, specially applied for, of a twothirds majority of the Assembly. The procedure provides to some extent against the conduct of the League falling into tho hands of a group of nations; danger of the long dominance of an "old gang" is lessened when the responsibility of office is handed on at intervals from nation to nation. Nor can lobbying or wire-pulling affect the choice of president. Tho choice goes automatically to the representative on the council of that nation whose name, in its French spelling, comes next in alphabetical order, and it is now Australia's turn. NEW HORIZONS BY AIR Aeroplanes built on the "geodetic" principle, as embodied in a now typo of Air Force general purpose machine, will have so great a range, states the air correspondent of tho London Observer, that every capital in Europe will be within striking distance of bases in Great Britain. It follows that any part of Great Britain will be within range of air bases in countries whoso frontiers are 1500 milos away. Although tho Wellesley general purpose machine was not designed especially for bombing, it could, without sacrifice of the load safety factor, fly 8000 miles. It could carry a considerable load of bombs 2000 miles and return to its base on one -load of fuel. Thus in the European area encompassed by its radius of effectivo action lies Leningrad, Moscow, Athens, Rome and Madrid. Hitherto Great Britain has been within striking distance of bases in France, Belgium and Western Germany, but in no serious danger from places farther away. The new situation now created is one that must bo very seriously considered. It will, of course, be remembered that aeroplanes on a war errand must not pass over neutral territory, and that deviations to avoid doing this can only be made at the cost of time, fuel and some of tho war load. Clearly, questions of alliances and ententes will inevitably take on new aspects in the light of the capabilities of aircraft constructed on this new weight-saving principle. The potentialities of air power aro considerably enhanced, and at least of equal importance may be the effect upon commercial aviation as a paying proposition, rendering, it less dependont upon State subsidies and bringing nearer the day of its complete emancipation.