NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22818, 27 August 1937, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PLAYING THE DEMOCRATIC GAME The essence of British democracy is that the overwhelming majority of the people, rich and poor alike, are practising democrats, writes Mr. Arthur Bryant in the London Observer. In other words, they are prepared to play the democratic game, both by taking a part in the deliberations that precede legislative enactment and by obeying it, once it has become law, however little they like it. When an Englishman sees those of whom he disapproves set in lawful authority over him, lie restrains his natural instinct to snap his fingers and refuse obedience. He has learned from long and inherited experience that it is better for everyone that he should put up for a time with what he regards as an evil. What he loses on the roundabouts he will make up on the swings. His turn will come later. MENTAL MASS PRODUCTION A strong attack on what he described as the modern tendency toward "mental mass production" was made by Sir Charles Grant Robertson, principal and vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, in a recent speech. With the great development of science, he said, it seems to him to be the particular object of far too many people to mould everyone in one common, uniform and depressing mass—mass hypnosis, mass production of mindp all the same. Everyone appeared to be trying to think the same thoughts with no conviction, he added, and aiming at the same things without any real sincerity of purpose. Such totalitarian uniformity was already a danger to civilisation as it had been developed in three or four powerful European States. Sir Charles criticised broadcasting and the tendency it was producing in this direction. He had no de.sire to be instructed by the wireless along with 10,000,000 other people. He preferred to choose for himself. MARCONI'S STATURE When the early twentieth century comes to be surveyed by historians j'et unborn, says the Times, in comment on the death of Marconi, and its great personalities to be estimated, not according to the figure they cut in our eyes, but by the measure of their influence on the world our posterity have inherited, and the lives they live, it is probable that many names now venerated and resounding will sink into a minor repute; but it is difficult to imagine any diminution of the fame of Gugliclmo Marconi. He may even be regarded as the supremely significant character of our epoch, the name by which the age is called. Marconi, like Newton and all other great men of science, stood upon the shoulders of giants; and the work he did has only yielded its rich harvest through the labours of hosts of less famous successors, who have been no mere disciples but contributors of original and potent. Earlier students than Marconi had investigated the nature of electric radiation, and sketched the uses to which it might be put; the crucial discovery of the thermionic valve, which alone made possible the vast new developments of wireless telephony, was not made by the master. Yet the popular judgment, which selects Marconi as the representative of the whole body of workers' in this field, is accepted by the community he is chosen to represent.

"HEALTHWAY CODE" "If the Government considers it necessary to issue a Highway Code to protect road-users, how much greater is the need for a Healthway Code when one remembers the high incidence of preventable deaths and ill-health ?" said Mr. F. T. West, of the Cheshire Health Insurance Committee, in addressing the congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute. "The subject-mat-ter of the code should include chapters on the paramount importance and value of good health, physical and mental fitness; rules of health, personal hygiene and care of the body; diet and food values; simple health and fitness exercises; method of treating slight indisposition and accidents; action to be taken in suspected infectious disease, tuberculosis or cancer; dangers arising from quack remedies and cures; avoidance of excess in exercise, work, eating and drinking; knowledge of the physical changes in late middle age and the limits nature then imposes; functions of public health authorities, insurance committees and voluntary health organisations; and, finally, steps to be taken in the event of enemy air, gas and bomb attacks. Each chapter should bo written by an expert on tho subject, and preferably one who has had journalistic experience and is able to ' put it over.' It should be published under authority of Parliament and a copy issued free to every family in the land." jtTHE EDUCATED MAN

"Education is not knowledge, still less is it vocational training," said Mr. W. A. Levine, general manager of the Alliance Assurance Company, Limited, in his presidential address to the Chartered Insurance Institute in Birmingham. "Rather is it the preparation of the mind, the making of the mind into as perfect an instrument as possible for dealing with tho whole of life. The object of education is not that you may be proficient in your profession, but that you may learn to know the truth, and truth is many-sided. Knowledge is not an aggregate of isolated sciences, eacli of which can bo digested separately. Its branches have an inconvenient way of getting" entangled with one another. An intelligent knowledge of what is going on in the world around, of social and political relations and tho organisation of industry, of the effects of fresh legislation, is essential. Tho educated man must possess the critical faculty and the power of reasoning. Education should lead to a broadening of one's outlook and should ' stimulate individuality; it should be an instrument for dealing, with the whole of life and not merely; with the training for a particular vocation. Tho man who is truly educated has a sense of tolerance. Intellectual progress is only possible where the qualities of criticism and tolerance are freely permitted. Such progress is impossible where dictated mass opinion prevails. Real education, real intellectual progress, require that there nhould be individual freedom.''