NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22435, 3 June 1936, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

OVER-PRESSURE IN SCHOOLS

"It is undoubtedly the case that over-pressure has become the curse of secondary education," said Mr. LeesSmith, M.P., a former Minister of Education, Bpeaking in a debate on homework in the House of Commons. "In England the reason why no pupil in a secondary school can escape from it is that the school certificate examination and the matriculation examination for entry into a university have now been made one and the same. That development has been a disaster. As a result of it, schools are judged by the number of matriculation successes that they can put before the public, and it means that practically all the children are being prepared primarily for this matriculation examination. That has inevitably led to over-pressure."

SUPER-CABINET SUGGESTED

" Can the State control the great private interests, or will it be controlled -by them?" asked Sir Arthur Salter in a recent lecture on " The Pattern of the Coming State." "There is a real danger that, instead of a competitive State, we shall have not a socialist State but a capitalist monopoly State. An increasing system of State protection and subsidy and State-enforced monopolies may subject the general public to tyranny of great vested interests. Can this danger be avoided? I think it can, on one condition. The State must create a new organ of government for planning general policy—a super-Cabinet of Ministers relieved of departmental duties, assisted by a carefully organised planning commission. It is the absence of such a general policy which results in Ministers being rushed off their feet by organised interests who present a rubber scheme or a sugar scheme, and so on, and press it upon them with all the advantage of careful and skilful preparation. If this defect in the structure of government can be remedied, the public will and public interest, ultimately and conditionally omnipotent through the universal franchise, can prevail."

A CHRISTIAN WORLD-ORDER

"No Christian can face the problem of world peace, as it presses so painfully upon us to-day, and be loyal to his religion, without making a great venture of faith. He must think and act as if it were really true that the only solution is spiritual, and that there is no cure for war but through the coming of the Kingdom of God," said Archdeacon Macnutt, preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. "We used to be told that science would save us, and that progress would lead us all jnto the earthly paradise of a warlesg world. But it is science which, having invented the means for aerial flight, has also made bombs and equipped aeroplanes for dropping them upon defenceless cities. The real problem of international peace is the problem of men and women, the problem of human hearts, minds, and wills. Man needs salvation from himself, and no science can provide that. You must change men and set them marching in a new direction before they can learn how tb order their relationships to one another'in such a way as to get rid of the incessant danger of war. 'We are committed,' it has been well said, 'to what in the eyes of the world must be a desperate belief,. that a Christian world-order, the Christian world-order, is ultimately tho only one which, from any point of view, will work,' the only one that will work out to peace."

MODERN MICAWBERS

Some observations out of his experience with debtors are included in Judge J. D. Crawford's book "Reflections and Recollections." Thej fecundity of the debtors, he writes, was remarkable; it seemed to be in the inverse ratio to their ability to pay their debts. They did not appear to be the least perturbed by being in debt. The prototype of the immortal Mr. Micawber is to be found in the busy English county Courts most days when the Judge is hearing judgment summonses. A long experience of dealing with debtors, whether in bankruptcy or on the judgment summons, has convinced me that however painful the process of endeavouring to keep above water may be, as soon as the debtor is one of the submerged, he becomes as cheerful, though perhaps not quite so confident of "something turning up," as was the case with Mr. Micawber. "I am convinced that it would be a great mistake to abolish committal for non-payment of debts," the Judge, having regard to the safeguards provided by law. In times of illness or distress, if the friend -or tradesman knows that he has the weapon of the judgment summons, he may and probably will give credit. Deprive him of that weapon he will be very chary in giving credit.

LESSONS FOR THE LEAGUE

The lessons to be learnt from the experience of the League of Nations' action against Italy were summed up by Mr. Stanley Baldwin in a recent speech aa follows: —To-day, if you take the great Powers who combine armed resources with industrial resources, you have three of the greatest outside the League altogether—the United States of America, Germany and Japan. Their absence makes the imposition of sanctions of : less force than they would be were they imposing them too. But th<§ nations within the League, though unable to prevent the war beginning between Italy and Abyssinia, took all the prescribed collective steps in declaring the aggressor, and in imposing certain sanctions. One or two things have clearly emerged from our experience, and they are those: —There does not seem yet to be effective machinery for. stopping a war before it begins: if one party is determined to go to war and not to submit the differences in dispute to discussion and to arbitration. Secondly, that to a great extent sanctions are slow in action, that sanctions lose a great deal of their force unless they nan be supported by the ultimate sanction, which is blockade or force. It is difficult to see how, under the existing membership of the League, blockade would be agreed to inside the League. Collective seourity will never' work unless all the nations that take part in it are prepared simultaneously to threaten with sanctions and to fight, if necessary, an aggressor, and that means that the nations taking part in that collective security must be ready.