NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22852, 6 October 1937, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

DEMOCRACY MUST FIGHT "One cannot abolish international rivalry by preaching meekness to those who believe in the divine mission of ruthless aggression," said Dr. Moritz Bonn in a recent speech. "No political system can endure whose members have not an ardent faith in its superiority to other systems. There is no need for bragging about democracy or for out vicing the advocates of other systems' who slander one s faith in it by deceitful propaganda and by competitive lying agencies. But the truth must be faced, however unpleasant it may be. Democracy cannot get over its limitations by merely asking for toleration of its mild creed from those who flatly deny the creed as well as the need for toleration. Democracy did not grow by patting its enemies on the back. It cannot be made safe by curtseying to them. The challenge to democracy must become the challenge of democracy if democracy is going to survive." A WORD FOR CHICAGO "Chicago is a beautiful city—a city of culture and light," Dr. Stewart, Bishop of Chicago, said in an interview in Scotland. He described the common misconception of Chicago as a city of gangsters and gunmen as "an outrage." "I have been in Chicago for 44 years, and-1 have never heard a gun nor met a gunman," he said. "Chicago, of course, is a polyglot city. The gunmen about whom you read and hear so much are Sicilians who carry their tends to America. They arc mostly bandits mixed up with political and liquor rings. They have nothing to do with the community as a whole. We have two universities.

We have our great symphony orchestra —perhaps more new music is presented in Chicago than in any other city outside Cineinatti. We lead the country in the publication of journals in foreign tongues; we are surpassed only by Washington in the number of books in our library; and the typical American novel was born in Chicago." SAVING THE HIGHLANDS Among recent acquisitions by the nation, the gift to the National Trust of Scotland of some 20 square miles in the Highlands stands out both for its extent and its character, says the Sunday Times. The area conveyed lies between Glencoe and Glen Etive, and includes the celebrated Three Sisters of Glencoe. The Trust already owned considerable property in the Glencoe region; and as the new addition adjoins it, the effect will be to secure for all time a large block of land which, for scenic grandeur, apart from its historic associations, has perhaps no superior in the Scottish Highlands. This great gain for posterity has been achieved by voluntary effort. The State had no hand in it; but a very important contribution was that made by the Pilgrim Trust, i.e., by American money. The fact provokes certain questions. It is obvious that on any long-sighted view of national interest there is a very strong case for bringing under national or Trust ownership not merely 20 but 200 square miles of Highland scenery. In a different region, for instance, it has been suggested that the whole district of the Cairngorms is peculiarly suited to become a National Park. And there are other areas which, though smaller, could make not less valid claims. Is there any reasonable prospect that private enterprise will meet the needs while there is time? The case calls for serious consideration.

NAVAL ARMS TREATY In bringing before the British Parliament a measure for the ratification of the Naval Treaty of 1936, the First Lord of the Admiralty was in a position to report on the naval agreements with Russia and Germany. Thus, notes the Christian Science Monitor, the field of agreement is now widened by understandings with two other great countries which cannot often be bracketed together. The measure of success which is registered in this treaty lies not so much in the modest limitation accomplished as in the fact that it has been possible at all in the present troubled state of the world to maintain the process of continuous agreement as begun at Washington. What is of main importance in all these agreements is that the signatories undertake to exchange advance information with regard to construction programmes. Such an understanding, if faithfully adhered to, removes one of the chief evils in armament competition. It removes that uncertainty and suspicion which before 1914 were the causes of feverish speculative building. Japan unfortunately remains outside the Naval Treaty, and the continuance of unrest in the Far East does not make it likely that she will quickly come in. It may bo hoped that Italy will soon join. But it is no small gain that the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia should be aligned under agreements which at least put some top limit to qualitative armament and ensure exchange of information in regard to all armament.

CHRISTIAN ESSENTIALS Wo church people have during two generations found a far wider application of our Christian works, to our great Rain, so we must not stand still in the progress of our faith, writes Mr. H. B. Shepheard, in the Congregational Quarterly. We must not be contented with what modernism has won for us, its liberality of mind and enlarged outlook. Liberty must not be licence, to believe anything or nothing. We must go on climbing; and the stairway is spiral; it returns upon itself at a higher level, 10-day I think that is the sign of the times—thero are leaders calling us to follow them higher, to a new, but old, outlook, where from the next window the climber looks out again upon old things, which he had forgotten, but on larger horizons. We shall not misunderstand them because they are reCalling us to the essential tenths of the Christian faith. They are not fundamentalists. They never were; they are not old enough even to remember what fundamentalism was. They have themselves long ago learned their modernism. But they are not content with anything less than that faith which, unless a man believes, he can hardly be called Christian. I mean that, as fifty years ago we could not be content with fundamentalism, so to-day modernism is not enough. We need the old truths again, the essential realities, which have been of the faith from the beginning. We must go on to rediscover them, in wider meanings and apprehension.