NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22822, 1 September 1937, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

GOVERNMENT IN A FLURRY Government in a democracy like Britain is very largely in a flurry, said Sir William Beveridge, director of the London School of Economics, in a recent speech. He recalled that when helping to prepare a health and unemployment insurance scheme for the Government in 1909 he spent three months in a "delightful academic atmosphere at the Board of Trade." Then they were told that the Government was going to proceed with a bill. The moment they left the atmosphere of the department for that of the Cabinet they got into an atmosphere that seemed to be one of pandemonium, of hastily snatched decisions and compromises—decisions by people who had nothing more than tired, hurried minds to give to their problems. THINGS PAST Amidst the mutter of the guns from China to Bilbao —for to-day, East, West, nowhere's best —a far-off romantic note makes itself heard, notes the Sunday Times. An excavator in Egypt has found a fragment of pottery on which are inscribed 18 lines of an ode by Sappho till now known only in fragmentary quotations. Sermons on stones, and poems on sherds; out of the past, indeed, comes forth sweetness. It has been well said that the past, at least, is secure. But that it should be secure in just this way! The poetry of our own civilisation is at best —or worst —"embalmed in everlasting ink." And all the arrogance of science, all its eflorts at the domination of space, time, and mortality, can show nothing more powerful against "cormorant devouring Time" than a few lines painted or scratched on a piece of baked clay. MODERN SLAVES OF THOUGHT "The danger which threatens civilisation to-day is servility of thought," said Lord Eustace Percy in an address to teachers at the Junior Constitutional Club, Piccadilly. "That is a disease, not of illiteracy, but of education. The illiterate, moving in the narrow circle of his own experience, can judge that experience soundly. The danger comes when education widens his circle and yet fails to show him how he may exercise an independent judgment on facts and ideas beyond his own experience. Kranklv, much 'literary' teaching of English to-day tends positively to softening of the brain. It never introduces the scholar to the literature of exposition and clear reasoning. Still less does it teach him to express clearly for himself an accurate process of thought. W hen 'progressives' tell us that education should 'inculcate 1 habits of co-operation,' let us remember that no man's co-operation is worth having unless he can think for himself. It is far better that a man j should wear an old school tie round his neck than a fashionable 'ism' on his tongue. v •

CONTEMPORARY BRITISH ART

Each generation reputedly gets the art it deserves, says Mr. Graham Bell, writing in the Listener on contemporary British art. Our generation, since it has been rich in apologists for painting, has got an art that needs explanation. To-day we have the cult of the unfinished Manet, the slight and brilliant sketch. Even the great Siekert shows too much of the work in progress and too little of the finality we hope for from a* master. And too much modern painting is more ephemeral than this, tentative often in feeling, as. well as in execution. Sensitiveness, directness, decorative qualities, colour, the artist's handwriting—all the critical standbyes have become such efficient obstacles in the artist's way that he is lucky indeed to catch a glimpse of the real purpose of art. Things have changed, and if to-day those bad-tem-pered old centenarians Messieurs Degas and Cezanne were to walk into a recent London exhibition, one suspects that they would despair to find so much superficial beauty and so little of the hard brilliance which has been their speciaj contribution to painting—so little cake and such a quantity of icing.

" ECONOMIC SUFFOCATION " "Why should so many countries bo wanting to make a change from the policies of self-sufficiency and trade exclusiveness described as economic nationalism?" asked Sir Arthur Salter in a recent broadcast talk. Answering his own question, Sir Arthur said: — "The first and simplest reason is just this. Every import is, of course, somebody's export. And now that we are all shutting out pther people's goods, we are all necessarily failing to sell the goods abroad that we should otherwise bo able to. Now when two people make a bargain, whether they are in the same country or in different countries, this nominally means that the transaction is to the advantage of both parties. Sometimes, indeed, one person, or one country, may snatch an advantage. But mutual benefit is the 'general rule. It is natural, therefore, that after six years in which the impediments to international trade have been so greatly increased, one country after another should now be realising what it is losing through the decline of its export trade. But the actual economic loss caused by economic nationalism is only one reason for trying to modify it, and is not in itself perhaps the most important one. The present serious tension in international affairs is very largely due to a sense of 'economic suffocation' which comes from economic nationalism. And the actual loss of export trade is, in its political consequences, immensely more serious because it is due to the action not of individuals, but of Governments. Each country, conscious of the loss of its exports, tends to resent the action of other Governments which has immediately caused it; and it usually thinks a great deal more of what other countries have done to impede its own trade than of what it is doing itself to impede theirs. In the course of keen economic competition, conflicts of interest, frictions and losses are, inevitable. But when the conflicts are between individuals only, the consequences, though regrettable, are not dangerous to the peace of the world. When Governments, however, who have the power of their armed forces behind them, are the protagonists—as they are in a period of extreme economic nationalism —the danger is obvious and likely at any time to become serious."