NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22988, 16 March 1938, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ROAD MANNERS PATROL In the campaign for road safety the British Ministry of Transport is having 800 police officers specially trained to educate the public in good road manners. They will be members of a new experimental mobile force, on motor-cycles, and their purpose, the Sunday Times explains, is not to increase the number of prosecutions but to remind road users where extra consideration might be shown and where the exercise of a little more thought would help. "Such matters do not come within the framework of the law," said an official at the Home Office. "Hitherto it has been nobody's business to give a word in season. This new mobile force will give such advice in a friendly spirit."

A TRUNCHEON NECESSARY "Why Britain should rearm" is the subject of a message by the Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington-lngram, in his Diocesan Magazine. He says:—"The idea that the way to peace is to allow yourself to be trampled upon was seen to be futile by the fate of Abyssinia and China. Hence it is not unchristian to back up the policy of rearmament, because in this imperfect world it appears to be the only road to peace. We British have drifted into the position of the policeman who has to keep order in the world; but every policeman must have, in the last resort, a truncheon. We laid aside our truncheon, under the mistaken idea that the rest of the world would follow our example. The moment we announced our intention to resume our trunchecn, the danger of war in Europe diminished by 50 per cent." IMPERIAL RESPONSIBILITY Let us remember that upon us and our immediate successors depend the peace and welfare of a great part of the earth's inhabitants, and that we cannot abdicate from that i .uonsibility or evade it by neglecting it, says Sir Edward Grigg, M.P., writing in the London Observer. It is a fateful load, and we must bear it, like Atlas, or be destroyed by it. For it is not our insular freedom only that is at stake; it is the future of a world-wide political system which is building up, slowly, maybe, but steadily, the right and capacity of men to govern themselves, together with the institutions, delicate in their infancy, which will enable them to do so. If that system were to weaken .and dissolve, the struggle for its heritage would be far vaster than that which marked the decline and fall of the Roman Empire; and who can say that in the struggle another age of darkness would not overwhelm our Christian civilisation ? It is therefore no rhetorical exaggeration, but a plain statement of inescapable truth, that the peace and progress of the world will depend in this 20th century upon the character of the British Parliament and electorate. Wo are but fortyfive millions, we upon whom it principally rests, and our numbers will soon be diminishing. But we have the quality, if we will use instead of wasting it; and the key to its use is early education, both moral and physical, not only in worktime, but in leisure. REFORMING THE LEAGUE Mr. Anthony Eden recently put the first principle of the League of Nations as "the promotion of international co-operation." That is not only the first but the only principle that makes sense of any league of nations, remarks the London Observer. It is because a disastrous conspiracy of circumstances has had the effect of belying that principle in the case of the present League that the case for reform is being argued. But before such a thing becomes possible present facts and the implications of first principles must be honestly faced. The facts are that in social work the League has done good. It has failed in its primary object of preventing war. The main reason for that failure is that when four out of seven Great Powers formally or in effect stood outside the League the League had 110 possible "sanction" against war. By attempting to apply the theoretic sanctions prescribed by Article 16 of the Covenant —-an article drafted in 1919 on the supposition of a universal membership of the League—the League's only effect was to damage itself by exhibiting its impotence. What then would be the quick, simple, effective way back to first principles? Obviously by attempting to reconstitute a true League. Why not convene a conference of "League members" with "non-League members" to discuss the formation of such a League? Germany had no voice in the 1919 Covenant. The principles, means and purposes of the cause are all contained within the one word co-operation. THE PRESS AND RADIO Speaking recently on "Democracy and the Press," Mr. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, said: —More than ever is the average man in his new-found power dependent upon accurate information to guide him in his daily life. Actions are so numerous and reactions so prompt in this new world where communication has eliminated space and crystallised time into the present that man must have all the assistance that an honest presentation of the news can give. Only tho newspaper, gathering its reports from all the available news sources and presenting those reports without bias and without emotion can provido tho balance and the perspective that aro essential if public opinion is to be truly informed and if the democratic way of life is to survive. But it is only the unprejudiced newspaper that has this opportunity," Mr. Sulzberger continued. "The partisan organ, the paper devoted to a cause, still plays its role, to be sure; and whether it be a'great metropolitan journal or the voice of a pamphleteer—a prophet or village Hampden of the press who may challenge everything we hold dear—a proper regard for the true significance of a free press must leave such publications undisturbed. But a newspaper that plays only one side is in the same category as a radio speech, for even though the radio station may make earnest and intelligent effort to give the other side its chance, it remains true that whatever is on the air dominates tho radio's first page at that moment, and there can be no guarantee that what comes after will be heard by the same audience. Only the well-balanced newspaper can indicate the relative importance of the world's affairs."