NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22392, 13 April 1936, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

UNDER DICTATORSHIP In a lecture at Queen's College, London, on "The Moral Progress of the World," the Bishop of Croydon expressed grave concern for the future of mankind because of the educational policies now adopted in totalitarian States like Russia, Germany and Italy. Dr. Woods spoke of the complete subversion of tho personality of the child in these countries to-day to suit tho views of a small group of people wielding enormous power. He said that a considerable distance had been travelled along tho road of moral progress in Britain, and ho instanced the enormous changes during the past century in education, the caro of the poor, and the general raising of tho standard of living. Again, the eyes of many people had been opened to the appreciation of beauty in its many forms. In particular, this belief was borne out by the public wrath -fl'hich the desecration of tho countryside aroused to-day.

CHINESE CULTURE A new accenting of the phrase "Chinese art" was urged by Dr. Chang Peng-chun, professor, of philosophy at Nankai University, Tientsin, in a lecture at Manchester University recently on "Suggestive Values in China's Cultural Heritage for tho Modern World." The lecturer said that the accent should bo on the word art. Though the contact between Cliineso culture and the Western world began very early—and Europe knew of Chinese things in Greek times, as was shown by the finding in excavations at Troy of a piece of jade which could only have come from China —tho general idea in the nineteenth century was that China was just a large piece of land waiting to be civilised. In the last 15 or 20 years, however, a new outlook had been taken, and a willingness, almost an eagerness, had been shown to seek stimulus in new avenues of thought. Perhaps tho general idea some years ago was that Chinese civilisation was of a spiritual order. As a matter of fact the things she sent abroad in past centuries were material —paper, furniture, glazed pottery, and so on. In modern industrialisation China was only beginning the process of humbly learning from countries that were earlier industrialised and he was afraid that for a generation or two her offering to the Western world would not be industrial things, unless of such handicrafts as were still kept alive. Therefore the offering would be along the superstructures of culture in art, in poetry, in literature, in philosophy.