NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22657, 19 February 1937, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ARCHBISHOP'S PARABLE In my old East End days in London I remember hearing that a quarrel had broken out in a decent public house, writes tho Ai'chbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Lang, in tho Diocesan Magazine. Tho good man of the house did his best, but in vain, to exhort his customers to be friendly and peaceable. Then he brought in his little child and set him in the midst. At the sight of him the tumult subsided and peace was restored. Weil, Europe is full of suspicions, misunderstandings and quarrels. It is not enough to wish, as wt> all do, or to exhort that peace and goodwill should be restored. There must be tho coming of a new spirit. EDUCATION'S SHORTCOMINGS Dissatisfaction with the results of tho educational system is expressed in a continuous stream of criticism that shows no sign of abating, says tho Church Times. In a presidential address to tho annual congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Miss Agnes Muir posed the question, "Is Education "a Failure?" and answered it with something perilously near an affirmative. The keys of learning and of culture seem to grow rustier with disuse, tho more widely their use is made available. There is enough truth in .this conclusion for it to bo thoroughly disturbing. The truth is that education itself is being made too cheap, not in cost, but in kind. Nobody ever learned anything much worth knowing without effort, and yet the whole trend of modern popular education is to try and eliminate effort. Noses that have never been put to tho grindstone will never be sharp. . PERSONAL STOCKTAKING, A poor salesman may be a genius at gardening; an indifferent stenographer sometimes never suspects her own gift for cookery, for dress design, for ability to pick up foreign languages. By thinking candidly about yourself, by being as friendly to yourself as you would be to another, you can often draw up a picture of your tastes, abilities, desires and hopes which will astonish you, writes Miss Dorothea Brando in tho Cosmopolitan. Take an inventory of yourself, paying special attention to the things you like but which you have little of in your daily life. Then start putting them into it. Often we have to begin slowly—reading, or finding courses of instruction within our means, or working out a programme for ourselves in solitude; but every day something can be done toward the now way of living. It can grow from an interest into a hobby, from a hobby into a side line, from a side line into a specialty. FAMILIES AND INCOME The decline of human fertility in Western countries is largely the result of the change in the nature of the family in the last 60 years, writes Mr. D. V. Glass, research secretary of the British Population Investigation Committee. That change has been brought abput by two main factors. First, the Sffato and other institutions have taken away many of the family's functions-r----and advisedly—since the family was by no means expert in performing them. Secondly, and most important, education—both formal and through advertising—has taught people to aim at a higher standard of life. But in our particular civilisation tho demands for large families and a high standard of life are generally incompatible. The remedy is not, however —as is implied in the suggestion that what we really need is a change in the attitude to marriage and the family—to lower the standard of life in order to raise the size of the family. The chief feature of any movement to increase fertility must, on the contrary, be a guarantee that the large family shall have a standard at least as high as tliat of the childless. It may, in fact, be necessary to give the large family an even higher real income. After all, if the State is to have the right to demand children, parents must have a corresponding right to dictate.tho terms on which those children shall be produced. THE MODERATE MAN A plea for moderation was made by Lord Twecdsmuir, the Governor-Gen-eral of Canada, and moro familiar to some as John Buchan, in an address to the Convocation of Queen's University, Canada. "We arc living in a confused and difficult world, and in such a time the human mind is predisposed to hasty conclusions," said Lord Twecdsmuir. "We are all inclined to look for some short cut out of our troubles, some violent courso which will shift things suddenly into a new orbit. Patience, reasonableness, what we call common sense, are apt to seem counsels of despair. The moderate man is at a discount. Moderation in the ordinary sense is not supposed to have much attraction for youth. It is assumed to be an attribute of disillusioned middle life, or even of old age. Youth desires to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm, and has little love for the half-hearted or even for tho temperate. Its model is Hotspur, not Nestor, It is shy of prudential counsels and the maxims of common sense. Its power lies in its enthusiasm. The familiar French proverb, 'lf only youth had knowledge, if only old age had power,' points to a popular belief that certain endowments and functions are incompatible. Vitality cannot co-exist with wisdom; wisdom involves laggard feet, weakened sinews and a faint heart. Tho moderate man is eternally ineffective. I would suggest to you that this view is a fallacy, for it accepts a shallow definition of moderation. It assumes that it is the stark opposite of enthusiasm. But the man of energy need not be the 'rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntary." Tho wise man need not be a sort of Buddha who is content to sit still and twiddle his thumbs. Coleridge said that no great thing was ever accomplished without enthusiasm, and that is simple truth; works are impossible without faith. But I wish to divest the word moderate of the sinister associations which are apt to surround it, and offer the moderate man to you as a type most worthy of imitation, a typo more valuable, more effective and, 1 think, more genuinely attractive than the mere fighting man, whose head is filled with battle-cries which he imperfectly understands"