NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22643, 3 February 1937, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

KEEPING UP WITH THOUGHT Perhaps one of the most characteristic features of the discoveries of the last thirty years has been the increasing speed with which wo have learned to adapt ourselves to now lines of thinking, writes Dr. Joseph Jastrow in his book, "The Story of Human Error." Common sense has not had time to establish itself at any stage of progress in the hectic development of our mental scenery, but is left trying to wade its way out out of the sticky ether of the nineteenth century. There are many who do not like the mad panorama of thought presented to them. They long for the conventionality of the past —to understand Nature in terms of "good horse-sense." And yet how unkind it seems to have to remark that, in the last analysis, "horse-sense" is, in all verity, but the kind of sense that a horse has. MR. BALDWIN'S PRESTIGE Mr. Baldwin is entitled to a great measure of the credit for the manner in which the constitutional crisis was handled, notes the Spectator. He not merely gave the best of himself but drew the best out of Parliament. Never perhaps in history has the prestige of a Prime Minister stood higher than does that of Mr. Baldwin to-day. He must be subjected now to the temptation to go before it is dimmed, as it inevitably must be when we return to the tormenting questions of foreign policy, rearmament and the distressed areas, of which he has manifested of late a steadily slackening grip. But few now think that his departure would be in the public interest. Lt would be monstrously unfair to add to the unprecedented burdens of the new Monarch a change in the head of his Government. BRITISH TRADE POLICY There had been continual expansion of trade since 1931 in Britain, while in the rest of the world trade had been shrinking, said Mr. W. Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, addressing the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. The wisdom of the Government's policy in 1931 and 1932 was greatly doubted at the time, but how could they account for the enormous increase in British export trade in various parts of the world, particularly within the British Empire, except by saying that it was the direct result of the Government's international mercantile policy ? How could they account for the huge increase in. the import totals, except on the ground of the greater purchasing capacity of the people? No predictions of those who said the imposition of tariffs was wrong had been fulfilled. EUROPE TAKING SIDES The Soviet pacts and Russian meddling in Spain are rudely followed by the anti-Soviet pacts, between Japan and Germany. What else could we expect? asks Mr. J. L. Garvin, writing in the London Observer. Who so plays at bowls should not be astonished by rubbers. What on earth could the Soviet pacts invite from Germany and others but counter-measures in terms both of alliances and equipment? The agreements between Moscow t Paris and Prague arranged for the renewed encirclement of the Reich in certain emergencies. Those agreements altered for the worse the whole aspect and outlook in Europe. Herr Hitler's protests were absolutely fundamental. From that day to this German countermeasures were bound to be of an equally formidable character. It would be sheer humbug or fatuity not to recognise the sequence. It is the old process of "Pressure—counter-pressure —explosion." It is nothing else. The British Government deprecates antagonistic blocs, and says it wishes to avoid them. The thing it deprecates looms | large before its eyes. The Soviet bloc is countered by its anti-Soviet bloc. How does this business concern the proper interests and intentions of the British people? Are they to be committed, directly or indirectly, to either of these portentous groups? Are they to bo dragged impotently into tho vortex of another war by forces which they neither originated nor can hope to control? The first, necessity in our affairs is to resolve that, as far as in us | lies, we shall not be dragged either into j a German-led crusade against Russia j or a Russian-led jehad against Germany. ENCYLCLOPEDIA AS PANACEA Mr. H. G. Wells is distressed, he ex- j plained to the Royal Institution re- j cently. by "the conspicuous ineffective- ; ness of modern knowledge and . . . j trained and studied thought in con- ! temporary affairs." On the one hand j the men of action, "the dictators, the leaders, the politicians, the newspaper directors, the spiritual guides and teachers" pay little attention to what is known about the world; while those who know, the scientists and specialised thinkers, have no means of putting their knowledge into practice. A gulf divides those who know without acting and those who act without knowing, and Mr, Wells proposes to bridge it with his World Encyclopedia. What would it be? For the ordinary citizen, Mr. Wells says, it would bo "a row of volumes in his own home or in some neighbouring house or in a convenient public library, or in any school or college, and in this row of volumes lie would without any great toil or iliflicutly find in a cear understandable language and kept up to date the ruling concepts of our social order, the outlines and main particulars in all fields if knowledge, an exact and reasonably letailed picture of our universe, a gen?ra! history of the world. This World Knevclopedia would be the mental naekground of every intelligent man in lie world. It would be alive and growng and changing continually under revision, extension and replacement by he original thinkers everywhere, livery university and research institution would be feeding it. Every fresh nind would be brought into contact vith its standing editorial organisation. Such an encyclopedia would play the •ole of an undogmatic Bible to a world •iilture. It would do just what our | mattered and disorientated intellectual i irganisations of to-day fall short of loing, It would hold the world together mentally."