NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23123, 23 August 1938, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CHINESE WOMAN LEADER'S FIRE A stirring message to England was sent by Madame Chjang Kai-shek, wife of China's Generalissimo, in the following words: —"Our barbaric enemies have boasted that they intend to beat us to our knees and break our spirit. We shall show those enemies, as we shall show our friends, that in the blood of our fellowmen and the ashes of our burned homes has flowered a new national spirit. As a snake strikes at its unsuspecting prey, so struck Japan at us, and our hope of peace was crushed. Wo found ourselves involved in the coils of a, war which soon expanded to tho view of tli.o world as the most colossal exhibition of remorseless barbarism that has stained the pages of history. Wo fought back, unprepared as we were, because there was nothing else left for us to do. Wo are still fighting back. Wo shall continue fighting back. We must, or submit to slavery as a people and death as a nation."

ABUSE OF MICROPHONE The trouble with some of tho amenities of civilisation is that their use tends to degenerate into abuse. It is so with tho microphone, asserts Mr. Ivor Brown, writing in the London Observer. As a disseminator of news and entertainment it has become indispensable. Tho pity is that, like other people's dogs, it should be allowed to bark both in and out of season. The generation brought up to bo seen and not heard has small sympathy with its successors whose delight is noise. To them, the microphone is a dubious blessing, and the amplifier an adder of insult to injury. Your old-time music-hall singer thrived on his powers of personal persuasion. For the contemporary crooner the amplified microphone has become a weapon of offence beside which tho roar of artillery seems silence. And whereas that other assaulter of tho ear, tho pneumatic road-drill, afflicts in the name of duty, tho amplified voice, depressed in crooning, assaults in the name of pleasure.

GERMANY'S STRONG POINT . The main answer to the question "What's good in Germany?" seems to be that the German has a civic 6ense, a feeling inborn or inbred that his country belongs to the nation first and the individual afterward, and that the land is one big national estate which must continually be improved and adorned, says Mr. Douglas Reed, author of "Insanity Fair," writing in the Spectator. This is not a product of Hitlerism. It is something permanent in the German character. In the patchwork-quilt Germany of the little kings, tho petty princes, the grand but diminutive duchies, it was there. It continued under the Kaisers, under the Socialist working-man President Ebert and the democratic republic, under the Field-Marshal President von Hindcnburg, under Bruning and von Papen, and it continues under Hitler. It is not a question of capitalism, socialism or any other ism. It would continue under German Communism. It is an over-riding sense of duty to the community that makes the German great. It if "did not stop at the frontiers, it would make him even greater. SMUGNESS THE GREAT DANGER "This nation requires the inspiration of a great ideal in the domestic, no less than in the foreign, sphere. It cannot give of its best without it. No nation can. A country without ideals is a country without faith or hope," said Mr. Anthony Eden, speaking at the Brotherhood Conference in England. "Of course, we should take account of the practical difficulties, but in so doing we should not weaken in our determination to employ what are tho most practical lyieans of pursuing our ideal. Tho ideal is the beacon that lights the road. Without it we grope uncertainly from expedient to expedient. But expedients, however ingenious, are no sure guide. So that, with each succeeding difficulty, the 'temporary remedy becomes more extravagant and less effective, and wo plunge ever further from tho path. Do not, therefore, let us be afraid of the taunt of being idealists, for without tho inspiration of an ideal a nation perishes. Nor should we be timid to proclaim and to maintain before the world those standards in which we believe. The greatest danger is that of a smug contentment. None, not even the best, can survive that baleful influence."

MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S PARABLE Speaking at the annual flower service at the Welsh Baptist Church in London, Mr. Lloyd George deplored the apathy of the present generation toward tho Church. "It is worse now than it ever was," lie added. "We have departed from the ages of faith. Faith is beating feebly. You can hardly hear its heart with a stethoscope. It is anaemic, bloodless. There is no energy, no zeal in it. This is not an age of faith. There is something lacking. Tho fundamentals of human character are tho same to-day as they were 2000 years ago. There are the same passions, tho same temptations, the same weaknesses, the same trials, the same tribulations, the same nobility, if you can touch it; the same faith, if you can get at it; the same greatness, if yoti can rouse it to action. But the moods have changed. To-day wo aro passing through a material mood. Speaking as a 'cultivator of tho soil,' " Mr. Lloyd George continued, "wo have had a longer drought than anybody present hero can remember. We have had in addition a great ground frost, which destroyed the l'ruit germs. What is tho result!' Verdure has withered, the fruits of the earth have been destroyed, tho wholo countryside looks bleak. That is tho kind of visitation that has come over the souls of humanity in this generation. Something has risen from tho earth and chilled the vital germs of fertility. 1 had to cope with tho drought at Churt. I sank a well and took a forced pump to spread water over the ground. Ah! yes, but X was only growing cabbages. You cannot grow, fertilise and make verdant tho souls of men by a forced pump. It lias got to come from some experience and from above. The diviners that find tho wells liavo never come from the hierarchy of this or any other country. They have come from much humbler quarters. The idealist is tho only realist in the long run. What has made this country is not that it has been a materialist country, but that from time to time you have had great spiritual leaders who have stirred it up. That iB what you want to-day."