NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22916, 20 December 1937, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FINDING THE WAY OUT Man is on a journey, and he has lost liis way, writes the Rev. McEwan Lawson in his booklet, "Release." Man stands in life a misfit. He has been caught and imprisoned, he plays with shadows behind bars, be broods in darkness, ho is afraid and lonely, he does ugly things because there is no light. But everywhere he beats at the doors of his prison for a new territory in which his mind and spirit may find full life. Thero are signs that we are becoming awar« of the fact that we have been marching along roads which lead to frustration and to death. We are coming to the end of a dreary epoch. We are weary of the sterile sands of mere disillusionment. Renaissance and revival are coming up over the edge of the world; these are days when, with a sense of returning responsibility for the marching and the journey of to-morrow, we can begin to strike new paths. IF THIS LIFE BE ALL "If any life beyond the present be denied, you need go no further. The world condemns iteelf," said Professor W. Macneile Dixon in one of his Gifford lectures. "For if, indeed, existence offers any values it can only bo to the individual beings who have a share in existence. If there be any good, and if there by any beauty, it is in them and their perceptions of such things. Where else could it be? The rest is but nitul and motion. And since if the valuators perish, all values, truth, goodness and the rest, go with them into the everlasting night, no theological or metaphysical twitterings can rebut the demonstrable hollowness of life, its inherent futility. The passing show may have its interest, but how slight and ephemeral, how painful an interest. We are offered, it seems, a sip from the cup of life, which is then forever withdrawn. No very munificent gift from th® exalted and almighty Absolute . ■ t ■ Let ns have no more of this!" AGE AND YOUTH "It is the practice of some elderly people to talk .a lot about youth, with a capital Y, and of the power and responsibility which they are handing on," said a practising medical psychologist in a recent broadcast talk. "But they are not really keen on giving their juniors any actual power. They say: 'The future belongs to Youth,' but they mortgage the future very heavily before weakness compels them to yield up their place. This attitude causes unhappiness and tension all round. And sometimes old people are jealous of the enthusiasm and vigour of the young to an extent which robs their life of the tranquillity which they ought to experience. They grudge young people their capacity for pleasure and enjoyment, especially if it appears to conflict with their own comfort, or importance. But there are some old people who become sentimental about the young, and put them on a pedestal and think they can do no wrong. This is an unhelpful attitude, for it. prevents them from using their judgment and experience where it might be useful. So try to preserve a balance in all these things and be ready to give place at the right moment to those who are coming after." WORLD COMMONWEALTH The first and critical step toward the realisation of an international commonwealth must be taken by two or more States which have carried the principle of the national commonwealth to its furthest expression: the fewer the easier, writes Mr. Lionel Curtis in the third and latest volume of his work, "Civitas Dei." It would not matter how small the number might be, if the result was a genuine international commonwealth.. Clearly this step would be least difficult for national commonwealths with a common language, with similar constitutions, whose security already depends on each other. I cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion, to which the reasoning followed in these pages has led, that in the world as now ordered, either Australia, New Zealand, or both together with Great Britain are the countries best able to construct the first footbridge across the gulf in men's minds which now prevents the world from passing from the national to the international commonwealth. But of this I am sure: the initiative would have to come from Australia or New Zealand. I cannot resist the conclusion that one or other of these minor commonwealths holds, though it does not know it, a key to the door which, until it is opened, imprisons tho whole of mankind. THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK , Whether another slump is imminent, a question much canvassed in Britain and America, was discussed by Mr. H. D. Henderson in a recent 8.8.C. broadcast. "America," he said, "is a very important country. The purchases of its people play an important part in world trade, and if a really severe depression should develop there it would have repercussions on the outside world which might eventually be serious. Much, therefore, depends on developments in the United States in the next few months. At the moment the outlook there is unfavourable Steel production has been falling pminously, and there are other disquieting symptoms. There has been a fall in the prices of many agricultural products; and if that were to persist the purchasing power of the farming community might again be seriously curtailed. There has been u Stock Exchange collapse, and in the United States, where speculative habits of investment are so widely spread, that may bo an important fuctor in aggravating the position. But even in the United States the position is very different, and fundamentally farstronger than it was in 1929, and it is easy to imagine various steps that might be taken which would revive constructional activity and arrest the drift toward depression. For us in Great Britain we can, 1 think, fairly safely say that there will have to be a very severe depression indeed in the United States if there is to be even a moderate depression here. Apart from possible repercussions from outside, our own industrial outlook remains reasonably satisfactory; that is, so far as the next year or 18 months are concerned. Later on it may be another story—but sufficient for the year are the slumps thereof."