NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22539, 2 October 1936, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

REAL CULTURAL VALUES Matthew Arnold defined culture as the study of a "perfection which consists in becoming rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances," but we tend to put the cart before the horse, possession before perfection, the outward and visible sign (usually a car) before the inward and spiritual grace; and it is that tendency which makes us vulvar, writes -Mr. Maurice L. Jacks, headmaster of Mill Hill School, in the London Star. The "inner condition of the mind and spirit" is a condition of truth, goodness and beauty—the only real values in life; and until we can recognise these (being, perhaps better instructed in them in our schools), and until we can cease sacrificing them on the altar of convenience (it is usually the "modern conveniences'' that destroy the ancient beauty), we shall remain a vulgar generation. "GOOD FORM" CONSIDERED Conventional notions about good form were attacked at the international conference of the New Education Fellowship at Cheltenham by Mr, W. 15. Curry, headmaster of Dartington Hall, Devon, who said: —There is, in school after school, the worship of a mysterious thing called good form, which, so far as 1 can understand, is a way of making important things seem trivial and trivial things seem important. Jt is concerned with manners and behaviour and a thing called code. It is concerned, on the whole, with tho trivialities of behaviour, and yet in schools in which good form is thought important, it is a much more serious matter to violate the canons of good form than to violate the Ten Commandments. The serious worship of good form among the young seems inevitably to lead to inflexibility of temper, because the essence of good form is that you don't question it.

MUSSOLINI IN 1913 Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, the eminent President of the Columbia Universitv, New said in a recent speech: "At the time when the Government of Italy was setting about the conquest of Tripoli, in 19115, the Italian Socialist paper Avanti printed an article containing the following paragraph: 'Here then we are confronted by an Italy, nationalist, conservative. Clerical, which claims to make the sword its law, and the army the school of the nation. We had foreseen this moral perversion, and, for that reason, are not surprised by it. Put those who think that this preponderance of militarism is a sign of strength are mightily mistaken. Strong people have no need to give themselves up to such a stupid orgy as that in which the Italian press is now letting

itself go with mad exaltation. Strong peoples have some sense of measure. Italy, nationalist and militarist, shows that it lacks this sense. . . . Thus it comes almost that a miserable war of conquest is acclaimed as if it were a Roman triumph.' The name signed to this admirable expression of opinion was Benito Mub'solini." FEAR BREEDS DICTATORS " Civilisation can to a very great extent be tested by the importance attached to the individual, as an individual," said Dr. G. P. Gooch, the historian, at the International Conference of the New Education Fellowship at Cheltenham. "In my opinion," he added, "the most civilised countries in the world to-day are those where the individual counts for most, and the least civilised countries are those where the individual, as an individual, as a spiritual and rational being, counts for least. The European anarchy leads straight to the concentration of power in the hands of the State. Eear makes people huddle together like a flock of frightened animals; fear is the child of the European anarchy; fear is the child of the mighty armaments which are themselves an expression of that anarchy. The greater the fear the greater the power of the State. The more widespread the fear of attack the easier it is for the State to put forward the argument that the individual, with his wishes and his peculiarities, and his heresies, and all minorities of the community, have to suppress themselves in the higher, interest of national strength and national safety. Every dictator has a good deal to show for his run. Ho can get things done, sweep things out of the way, but all the time he is trampling on the spiritual freedom of the individual, Ihe longer his rule lasts, the moro people he disappoints, the moie those instincts deep down in us of self-determination and self-realis-ation will begin to reassert themselves."

"THE KINDLY FRUITS" If I am asked what particular, methods of dietary I recommend for the complete feeding of the body I am at once face to face with asking myself what is the experience of the ages of the world: under what conditions are men most • healthy and most happy in their functions, writes Dr. Josiali Oldlield in the Master Key Magazine. I. think the answer is found in the Litany of the Church of England, where every Sunday we ask for the "kindly fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them." Many of the vices—the grosser vices of the world, have gone hand in hand with over-feeding and excess of moat in the dietary. This, then is what the Church means )vhcn sho bids us ask for "tho kindly fruits of the earth." With the wisdom long anterior to tho discovei'ies of science she recognised that man can live without meat, but he cannot, live without vegetables. In all the fastings and davs of abstinence ami times of Lent, the advice was to abstain from flesh food. Kxperience proved that, tlm world was better for these periods of giving up this stimulating article of dietary. Now science, by her latest discoveries, steps in and emphasises the same thing. She says that in vegetables and fruits, in salads and milk, in butter and yolk of egg, you get vitamins, all the vitamins which are necessary for the development of tho body in the fullest health and vigour. Jiut when these are absent no amount of meat will ever give to the body what it needs. Hand in hand, then, inspiration and science should always go. Tho days of abstinence from meat of the past should again be restored to our life; but what we should never abstain from is the daily use of fresh vegetables, fresh salads, fresh fruits.