NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22966, 18 February 1938, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

"THE GREATEST OF THESE" The fine yet broad mind of Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, the first Lord Craigmyle, coined many noble utterances. Typical is that quoted by his sion, Lord Craigmyle, in a monograph just published on his father, ■who is recalled as saying:—"After the experience of a long life, I declare that I reckon magnanimity to be the noblest of human virtues. Divine it is like charity; and it carries our uplifted powers with it, being not only greatness, but also courage of the soul. Sympathy, toleration, a determined faith in the efficacy of a wise forgetfulness, goodwill which is the offspring of a wide imaginative vision—all these, matching forward to the ethical goal of forgiveness, are enlisted, captained, disciplined and led by magnanimity.'

OVERDOING PROPAGANDA "There is such a thing as ' saturation point,' both in chemistry and in hum#n reaction. It will almost certainly obtain in regard to propagandising" said Lord Horder, the eminent physician, addressing the Authors' Club in London. " Bullied, shouted at, overdosed by physic from the Left and from the Right, radio-ed and film-fed, we shall probably emerge a stunned, but still sceptical public, victims of propagandist shell-shock! As we regain full consciousness we begin to yearn for the simplicities; a documentary film or book stirs us out of proportion to its intrinsic merits. It will continue to do so more and more. Very shortly we shall be found cheering a nature film to the echo, and we shall remain immune to the glycerine heroics. Already the sheer exultant irresponsibility and impossibility of Mickey Mouse appeals to the most staid adults among us, no longer ashamed of joining the youngsters in whole-hearted and unconcealed laughter."

BRITISH PROSPERITY In the United States, says the Western Mail of Cardiff, there are alternating periods of boom conditions and slump threats; in Germany currency trouble and intensified economic nationalism hamper the expansion of international trade; in France the new labour laws and a succession of political embarrassments at home menace the body economic; Italy's intransigence estranges the democracies; Spain's civil war eliminates that country from the industrial field; and Japan hews a blasting path through the great trading lands of the Far East. Yet Britain goes on building and prospering. We have not reached the peak; there is always a higher peak. Nothing in this story is more remarkable than the resurgence of South Wales, still a "special area" and heir to problems of the long depression which have so far defied solution, but surely if slowly laying firm foundations for the new industrial era that approaches. New industries are here, others are on the way, and King Coal is sitting more easily on his throne.

DEFENCE OF THE LEAGUE An appeal for the League of Nations as a living reality in the present, and as a real hope for the future, was made by General Smuts in a broadcast speech transmitted from the League of Nations radio station at Geneva. He said: —People are already forgetting tho Great War and the wreck it has caused, and arc asking us to return to the very course which led to it, and must lead to forco in future. What is the case against tho League? The League is derided as, at best, a beautiful and impracticable dream of visionaries; and as, at worst, a deliberate device to perpetuate the dominance of the victors of the Great War and to secure their spoils. In any case, it is said, the League has, in fact, failed to give the security which it promised. What is my reply? It is true that the Covenant is a vision, but not that it is visionary. It is the truest, most realist vision yet seen in the affairs of the world and simply carries into world affairs that outlook of a liberal democratic society which is one of the great achievements of our advance. Surely the coucept of a world society, settling its affairs not by force of war, but common consultation and in co-operation, is essentially sound. The Covenant simply carries a step further tho process by which the State had already succeeded in suppressing private feuds and public violence, and has substituted peaceful Parliamentary action for both. The Covenant marks the furthest point yet reached in our progress towards a co-operative human society. That is its greatness; that is also its weakness. But there is no going back. The light once seen should never sink below our human horizon again.

LIMITS TO TOLERATION Tolerance is of the greater virtues; the good citizen must practise it not only toward his neighbour and in his own country but also, which is harder, toward the foreigner. This duty has been specially urged on us of late because of what happens under the dictatorships, says the Manchester Guardian. Tolerant of what, and with what end in view? It is not, apparently, if one looks closer, all despotic systems that are to go free of criticism, but only those for which at the time we have a weakness. Some whose blood boils at .Stalin's "purge" contemplate equably the frightful degradation of the German Jews; for others Hitler can do nothing right and Stalin nothing wrong. Thus tolerance is not, like justice, blind; she' knows what's what and sees a thing or two. She has turned diplomatist; she is to go abroad to lie for her country. Those who warn us not to criticise the reign of force are thinking of an ulterior end; they seek to please one -of the present despotisms. Policy absolves their conscience; they quote a lofty principle but serve expediency. Thus they arc able to forget that freedom is suppressed not in the abstract but in the bodies land the minds of men and women. They forget that justice, which enlarges the spirit, also is suppressed, that edicts of personal power dethrone the idea of law resting on the general consent, and that ruthless cruelty—whethor of Siberian exile, or of Mediterranean islands, or of German concentration camps—flourishes as cruelty always does when law and justice die. To tolerate such things for the sake of policy is to betray not only those who suffer but also the hope of a better day.