NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22515, 4 September 1936, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CALL FOR MORE POETS "Great poets are scarce —scarcer, perhaps, than scientific men," said Mr. Stanley Baldwin in addressing the Empire Universities Conference. "I always feel that one of the tragedies of the world is the way in which the devil is using the discoveries of the chemist and# of those men who invented the internal combustion epgine for the destruction of mankind. No poet has done that. I do not think many of them did much harm in their lives, but they left us incalculable benefits for this world, and if the universities can conspire to produce moro poets, more power to their elbow!"

FUNCTION OF POETRY Mr. Baldwin's statement at the Congress of the Universities of the British Umpire, that the world needs more poets to inspire it with a sense of unity and a sense of freedom, will be simply meaningless to honest Philistines and suspiciously matter-of-fact to aesthetes, states the Scotsman. Yet poetry does indirectly contribute to the realisation of human unity and the*value of freedom. It is at once the fine flower of the imagination and the chief stimulant of the imagination. And without the exercise of the imagination one can, with difficulty, if at .all, apprehend the truth. It needs an effort of the imagination to realise the essential unity of humanity that transcends race or nation or class, and without spiritual, intellectual, and political freedom full imaginative activit3' is impossible. One of the chief dangers of modern mechanical civilisation is that it tends to stunt the imagination and to substitute an insularity of mind for the insularity formerly caused by difficulties of communication. Poetry, like the arts of music and painting, keeps alive and nourishes the imagination.

FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS Speaking of the chronic depression haunting North-East England, iu his presidential address to the Methodist Conference at Newcastle, the Rev. C. Ensor Williams said; —"We are not satisfied that every effort has been made to solve this problem. It hurts us to know that there is suffering in a land where thero is plenty—to see underfed children, weary women and broken-looking men. Theso things ought not to be. I have no desire to utter fierce denunciations of wealth, for I have seen wealth consecrated to the service of God and humanity. I know men of wealth who lead simple and God-fearing lives. But there is a section of the community which is a danger to the State, whose life seems to consist of cocktail and sherry parties, cabarets and midnight revelries. There are decadent 'bright young things' who are the forerunners of gloom and disaster. Let these people be warned. We live in stern times. Every patriot must seek to build a community based on brotherhood and love of humanity."

GUNMEN IN IRELAND It is high time that the Government should prove to its unconstitutional opponents that it is in earnest. There has been far too much temporising, and far too much consideration for the man with the gun, writes the Irish Times in a review of conditions in the Free State 15 years after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Ireaty. We know that the Public Safety Act is not an ideal measure. In normal circumstances we should be opposed vigorously to its principle; but the circumstances m this country are anything but normal. The. veneer of respect for the law in the "Saorstat is perilously thin. Throughout the country young men have'been encouraged to impose their will on the populace by means of the gun. Trial by jury has been reduced to a farce. Witnesses are terrified to give evidence in any case that savours of "politics"; and a refusal to recognise the Court, with a shout of "Up, the Republic!" from the dock, is beginning once more to be a passport to a "national" reputation. Doubtless, this kind of thing is largely humbug; but there is a sinister element in it that cannot be ignored. If the Government yields to the pressure of armed throats, if it fails in its duty to administer the law without fear or favour, then it inevitably will abdicate its position.

SPIRITUAL HEALING The need for co-operation between the doctor, the minister, and tho psychologist for the development of spiritual healing was urged by the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead, of Leeds, at the Methodist Conference at Newcastle. Mr. Weatherhead was recently appointed to the City Temple, London. "We recognise that terrific energies sweep through tho personality —energies so tremendous that I would not like to say what tho limits are," he said. "Under certain conditions, it appears as though hardly anything in the nature of disease can withstand those energies. The great difficulty is that wo do not know how to release thoso energies into tho personality. Wo pray for one man and lie gets better; wo pray for another man and he does not —and we do not know why in either case." Mr. Weatherhead insisted thnt tliey must make full use of the amazing findings of medicine and surgery. "I would like to see the establishment of a centre to which people could go," he added. "At present a great number of people fall between tho doctor, the minister and tho psychologist. The doctor tends to recommend a holiday and a prescription; tho minister tends to tell tho patient to trust in God and to pray; tho psychologist is sometimes obsessed by tho idea of having tho patient psycho-analysed. Tho doctor may fail in that his method is almost wholly material; the minister, while doing good work, may fail because the seat of the patient's trouble is not within his reach at the moment —somewhere down below consciousness—and trust in God is not tho only thing required; the psychologist sometimes fails because, although capable in analysis, he _does not always consider synthesis as being within his scope. They cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again." If they could have cooperation between doctor, minister, and psychologist there could be a ministry of body, mind and spirit, which would bring some people, suffering very grievously, back to complete health.