NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22564, 31 October 1936, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

M. BLUM ON DEMOCRACY "Without the civil equality proclaimed by the French Revolution the totalitarian States of Europe would not to-day have at their head men sprung from the depths of the people and drawing both right and title from those regions," said the Premier of France, M. Blum, in a recent speech in defence of democracy. "How, in any event, can we refute the splendid evidence offered over so many years by the great Anglo-Saxon nations? Is it not thanks to democracy that Great Britain was enabled, combining progress and tradition, to achieve that continuous adaptation which,has permitted her to transform all her institutions while still remaining heiself? No; democracy does not pass out guilty from her long trial. Both by ordeal and reason, she stands justified,"

( DISCIPLINE IN LABOUR WORLD i [ A key problem for all popular move- ; ments involving large numbers of , people is discipline, says the Speeta- , tor, with particular reference to the Labour world. The situation created by ( strikes unauthorised by the union , leaders has lessons both for capital and labour. Employers cannot wonder at suffering . violence, if they refuse to listen to reason. Healthy co-operation between the two factors in production can oidj be obtained by a just balance. But Labour, too, would do well to 1 remember how much better is peace than war. The old Adam in all of us, | whether employer or employed, whis|M'rs that a gain tastes sweeter if won by jockeying the other side. No prompting does more to keep the world back. " Bevengo and wrong," said Shelley, " bring forth their kind." The . first duty of n civilised man is to keep the rules and play the game. Methods iof ilaw-breaking violence, like the stay-in strike, will never bring paradise in any country. What they have brought in Spain, we see; what they may bring in France, Ave shall see yet. THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION "If it be said, and it may truly be said, that modern civilised society is filled with individuals who, while making no formal profession of Christianity, and even specifically rejecting the Christian theology, do yet exhibit very notably a personal morality which is recognisably Christian, we must answer that their conduct may have its explanations elsewhere than in their opinions," said the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Hcnsley Henson, in the course of his Gifford lectures. "They aro the heirs of a social .tradition which, from time immemorial, has been saturated with Christian influences, they breathe an atmosphere which is richly charged with Christian ideas and ideals, they aro in their personal habit far more subject to inbred Christian instincts than to theories which they have formed for I themselves. In any case, tho essentially Christian behaviour of individual unbelievers proves as little as the essentially atheistic behaviour of individual Christians. The question is too large to be answered by individual examples on the one sido or the other." ANXIETY CAUSES DISEASE Lord Horder opened a very interesting discussion at tho British Association for the Advancement of Science, on the physiological strain caused by modern civilised conditions, and uttered a warning that, says the Spectator, most middle-class people would do well to hear. "In case after case," he said, " a tactfully conducted pursuit after fundamental causes removed the screen of headache, insomnia, indigestion and fatigue, and revealed the anxiety factor." Fundamentally, that is, anxiety is among tho commonest causes of serious disease. Why aro ws so much more anxious than our parents or our grandparents were? Partly, no doubt, because our material standards of life aro higher, and we quail more before tho deeper drop from them. Partly, because we are conscious, in the near background, of social and international insecurities, which, 1914, seemed much less real. Partly because, in the general decay of religious faith, a thought like " casting all your care upon Him," scarcely sustains as many thousands to-day as it sustained hundreds of thousands half a century ago. Partly, again, because tho systems of social insurance, which havti made tho manual worker's life less precarious, are such as in effect to leave the brain-worker out. Tho last point suggests, perhaps, the line of remedy for statesmen. NATIONS OF YES-MEN Wo have become witnesses in these latter days of strange events and mighty portents. All around us wo behold a world that wo imagined safe for democracy growing daily, as it seems safer for dictatorship, says the Morning Post. In Germany, in Italy, in Russia, struts your dictator, exultant, boastful, celestially self-confident, the idol of the million. Consulting nobody but the inner ring of his own elect, lie can dispose, by one Olympian stroke of his pen, of the lives and individual destinies of all his subjects. He is inspired by a half-divine sense of his mission, and he lashes his country into single conformity with his purpose. His power is signalised and his vanity gratified by the myriad battalions of men in shining armour who aro ready at a moment's notice to march anywhere and do anything at his bidding. Tho spcctaclo has begun to bo a little unnerving to some people in Britain. Voices are heard inquiring whether tho clumsy, old-fashioned, slow-witted, half-hearted, British democracy can seriously hope to compete with all this purposeful energy. Must not we too fall into lino lest wo be left behind in the race? Great Britain would have sunk low indeed if sho felt compelled to answer any of these questions in the affirmative. She is tho inheritor of national institutions and national traditions which have seven centuries of tradition bohind them. Through all the vicissitudes of time she has preserved those institutions and those traditions with a majestic tenacity; in this proud inheritance sho lives and moves and has her being. Is she suddenly to abandon it now, just because, owing to misfortunes of history or to disabilities of temperament, sundry millions of Germans and Italians and Russians have chosen to become somebody's Yesmen P,