NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22775, 8 July 1937, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

RELIGIOUS HERITAGES "There is a story of my country about a father who wanted to give a heritage to his sons," said Fraulein Ruth von Schultz-Garernitz in addressing the World Congress of Faiths held recently ia London. "Hp had a wonderful ring, but he had three sons. So he had other rings made exactly the same. Each brother thought that he had the genuine ring, but no one ever knew, knows, or will know, who really had the genuine ring, or if any of them had it. The rings are the religion of mankind. Our poet thought that the three rings were Judaism, Islam and Christianity. We at this congress know that there were more than those three rings made and given to all. We do not know which was the genuine ring, but we know that thev were miraculous. They were miracle-working rings because they gave men the possibility of understanding God, and by this conception of God to create culture."

THIRTY YEARS AGO AND TO-DAY

I do not regret that I was old enough to touch the fringe of Edwardian luxury. But [ render thanks to Providence that I was also young enough to relish and share the wider liberties of our subsequent age, writes the Hon. Harold Nicolson, M.P.. in his collection of essays, "Small Talk." Let us be frank about it. The Edwardians were vulgar to a decree. They lacked style. They possessed only the hard glitter of their own electric light: a light which beat down pitilessly upon courtier. ptarmigan, bridge scores, little enamel boxes, and plates and plates of food. They lacked simplicity, and their intricacies were expensive but futile. 1, for one, prefer the wide circle of our simpler horizon, tumbled though it be by the waves of uncertainty. Nor, when all is said and done, can one forgive the Edwardians for their fundamental illusion. For it never dawned upon them that intelligence was of any value.

ROAD DISCIPLINE NECESSARY

Sir Philip Game, in his report as Commissioner of .the London Metropolitan Police, appeals to all roadusers for their active and sustained assistance in solving the traffic problem and stresses the need for the spirit of "give and take." He points out that "since the time of Sir Robert Peel's reforms no single change has had more effect on the work of the police and their relations with the public than the introduction of the motor-car and the consequent revolution in the methods of transport." The pedestrian and the cyclist, he says, must submit to a certain amount of restriction for the common good. "It may be irritating." he says, "to have to wilk warily and to be thinking constantly of traffic when there are much more interesting things to think of. but most of us are ready to admit in our calmer moments that it is better to be irritated than to be killed, or even to have a leg broken." Sir Philip quotes the following epitaph:— Here lies the body of Samnel Hay, Who died disputing 1 the rig'it of way; He was risrht, dead right, as he strolled along, But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. THE YOUNGER GENERATION From time to time dignified men and women, adopting an air of "What is the world coming to?" pass severe strictures on the younger generation. Such gloomy censors would obtain no support Sir George Courthope. M.P. "Some people appear to be alarmed about the younger generation," he observed in a recent broadcast talk. "Personally, I hold a very different view. No doubt our young people feel some contempt for the standards and conventions of the past, but I admire their independence. They take a more intelligent interest in the welfare of their fellows than we older folk did at their age, and I believe they have quite as great a desire to serve as we had. Youthful enthusiasm is always apt to ignore the lessons of experience, but the passing years will remedy that, and I think we may hand on our great responsibilities to our successors with happy confidence. I think they will learn, better than we older ones have learned-, how to adapt themselves to the changes of the day. The increase of speed, the ease of communications of all kinds, the growth of mechanisation, the rapid march of science, all demand some variation in our mode of life, particularly. perhaps, in the way we use our leisure hours. I am sure that our people, young and old alike, are sound at heart, and determined that, however much we change with changing times, we should maintain what is best of our inheritance from the past."

PLANNING CREATES PRIVILEGE " The root objection I see in planning is that it always confers a privilege, a privilege on a section of the population, and prevents the rest of us from cooperating freely and happily with each other," said Professor Arnold Plant, of London University, in a recent broadcast. "Take the piecemeal plans that we' have already adopted in Britain, for instance. They stop people from carrying parcels for each other in motorvans, they stop them from growing potatoes for sale without paying a fine, they stop them from giving as much work to unemployed coalminers as they would like to do, unless, that is, they belong to the favoured class on which various Acts of Parliament have conferred the privilege of doing these things. Some of the prohibitions here are very subtle. For instance, one may still produce milk, but only if one charges prices which are so high that the masses of the public simply cannot afford to drink much of it. This is ap r parently planning. I call it favouritism. It is privilege. It is privilege of a kind which until quite recently Parliament has struggled for over 300 years to eliminate from our democratic country; and to my mind if we let this movement go on we shall reverse the whole trend of development which has been slowly producing in this country an economic system better fitted for a free people. So that this planning, to my mind, threatens the emergence of tlie only true economic democracy. My contention is that the population of Britain is still deplorably poor, far too poor for us to stop willing people from producing in order to give favoured persons a monopoly of the right to supply essential food, fuel, clothing and services."