LAW AND JUSTICE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22434, 2 June 1936, Page 8

LAW AND JUSTICE

"Legislation by representative bodies may be an imperfect method of producing a perfect system of law, but it, is the most practicable method which mankind has yet succeeded in evolving," said Lord Macmillan 111 a recent broadcast address. "It has at least this great merit, that it gives to every citi/.en the right to share, however infinitcsimallv, in the making of the laws which are to govern him. No intelligent observer can fail to be struck by the immense change which in recent times has come over oir ideas of what should be done by law that is, by tho State through the Statute Book—in every department of human life. It is not only essential to have good laws. It is 110 less essential that they shall be well administered. The administration of the law must be absolutely independent of everything except the law. Justice must be administered according to known and settled law, and not according to caprice, or as the instrument of any political policy, or at the beck and call of any outside power. There is no instinct more deep-rooted in our moral being than the instinct of justice. The more law approximates to justice as justice is for the time being conceived, the more readily will it bt> obeyed."

lectures or tutors Lectures are an essential part of university instruction in modern conditions, but at the same time the lecture may sometimes hulk disproportionately in the whole body of instruction which the student receives, says the report of the British University Grants Committee. It is a question whether the ordinary student is not required to attend too many lectures, to mark and learn a great deal more than he can inwardly digest. We believe, the report continues, that university opinion is very widely awake to the dangers and deficiencies of the compulsory lecture system as it now exists; and that there is substantial agreement as to the direction in which a remedy is to be sought. lectures might be fewer and need not be compulsory if a greater use could be made of the seminar or tutorial system. The distinctive advantage of this system is that the teacher meets the individual student or a group of students small enough to make possible a real discussion in which all present can take part, so that between the minds of student and teacher there is real give and take.

WAR NOT INEVITABLE War is never inevitable until the shooting begins. It is not inevitable now, asserts the Christian Century. That tho peace of the world is gravely imperilled on at least three fronts is so obvious that oven to state it is superfluous. But there are potent forces that mako for peace as well as those that make for war, and no ono can be suro enough of tho correctness of his own prediction of tho outcome to bo justified in acting upon tho belief that war is certain. Tho belief of enough people in the certainty of war will make war certain. The belief of enough people in tho possibility of peace will mako peaco possible. This is not creating the illusion of peace by wishful thinking. Among tho greatest of all tho facts making for peace to-day is tho existence of millions of people in the world who are determined to have it. These people are not disciplined like armies; they aro but meagrely equipped with symbols to make visible and impressively manifest their devotion to the cause; they have nothing that corresponds to martial music, fluttering flags and flashing uniforms; they are scattered in all lands, have no common language and cannot take counsel together. Most of them are confused in their thinking and inarticulate in speech. They may bo cajoled by propagandists or coerced by recruiting oflicors, but it takes somo doing, for their natural gravitation is all tho other way. Probably the common people have never wanted war; they want it now less than ever, and they aro. in general, less easy to cajole and coerce than any previous generation in the history of the world. That much, at least, democracy has done tor us. It has increased the drag which the warmakers must overcome before they can impart to any nation tho maniacal momentum that carries it into war.