NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23182, 31 October 1938, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

HAPPINESS A BY-PRODUCT Many wish reflections are contained in the new volume of the late Viscount Esher's "Journals and Letters." 'llius lie writes: —1 ran only repeat that the direct pursuit, of happiness is vain. Such is the experience ot men. Nothing is really obtainable except by the way. However, all nice children cry for the moon. Do not get into the habit of finding "nothing to say" to people. Yon should find lots to say to the humble and lowly, the stupid and dull. It gives you such an opportunity. Anyone can strike a spark with flint and steel. But to light, a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together takes ft bit of doing. 'l'lte effort —liko the game—is the tiling.

FRESH OR CANNED FOOD Is the difference between fresh food and preserved as great as we are predisposed to think? asks the London Observer. To a community that is forced to depend to a great extent upon the latter, a report from the Medical Research Council is surprisingly full of comfort. How the nutritive results of the two compare in the long run they decline to say, in the absence of what would be a very intricate investigation. But so far as chemical analysis goes, there is apparently little disparity. And, considering how much "freshness" evaporates in the process of marketing, it would not be wonderful if the advantage were sometimes to be found on the side of the "can."

IDEALS IN COLLISION Ultimately the international problem is not a material but a moral one (Czechoslovakia is only part of a larger question), and has become acute because of the clash of two mutually opposed ideals—the one pagan and the other Christian, one demanding the subservience of the citizen to the will of the State, the other asserting that the State is the servant of all free citizens. There can be no compromise on this great issue, asserts a correspondent writing to the Spectator. 'Io raise the question as to whether any outlook is worth defending at the cost of hideous armed force, and of all that would como out of this by way of horror, destruction and death, is to ask whether there arc any ideals in life that are worth the cost of the sacrifice of life itself. Righteousness and justice are indestructible, but they are jewels that may have to be fought for again, as they have been time and again in past ages. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, to-day as always, and we needs must hold the highest when we see it, whatever tho cost.

NATURE OF POETRY Poetry is life purified, according to the late Mr. John Drinkwater, writing on the nature and functions of poetry, in a posthumous volume "An Unfinished History." Not purified, indeed, of sorrow or even of sham, hut purified of insignificance. Some central power and purpose in the poet projects him into a region of undistracted vision, nnd there he sees truth with an absolute clarity that is beyond the reach of thought. In the moment of this realisation, and in the moment only, ho perfects his own being. Creation once achieved, the supreme felicity passes, never by that particular achievement to be recaptured. It is the act or condition of vision rather than the thing seen that counts, that makes poetry the wonder it is. A good poem may be written about anything, a fact which in my view reduces much recent critical writing to futility. There is a suggestion among the poets, many of them highly gifted, who have followed Mr. T. S. Eliot, that poetry, in its obligations to represent or interpret its own age, should to-day discard the cows and haystacks of tho neo-Georgians and concentrate on the more virile aspects of aviation and cantilever bridges. Communism and fascism, it seems, are also calling. Even if we accept this rather childish misrepresentation of the Georgian material, which of the new prophets can explain how in any sense or at any time a host of golden daffodils is a less suitable theme for poetry than a blast-furnace? The question is now, as it always has been and always must be, what sort of a poem has the poet made of either? In terms of poetry, modern machinery is no more significant of life than a primrose or a milk-pail, whatever it may be in the sphere of social or political propaganda.

WAR THE DESTROYER "To-day in many countries —in some without any choice —more energy is being concentrated on preparing tho means of destruction of homes than on the building of them," said Sir Harold Bellman in his presidential address to the International Congress of Building Societies at Zurich. "Indeed, I estimate that the world's present annual armaments bill is little short of twice tho total assets of the world's building societies. This is a diabolical perversion of the genius of the race. We must hope that sooner or later a more rational scale of values will determine men's energies. Meanwhile, we are justified in regarding tho promotion of the building society—or whatever local variation of name may be current —cause as one of tho worthwhile tasks of peace and itself a pacific influence; and thus wo hope it will

'Enrich the time (o come with smooth-faced pence. With smillnj? plenty anil fair prosperous days!' During the past decade T have visited many countries and enjoyed numerous contacts in their homes with those men and women who constitute the great mass of citizens. There is not a shadow of doubt that there is nothing thev so passionately long for as peace. If this issue—the issue of war and peace—were lefi to them to decide, they would make almost any sacrifice, consistent with self-respect and the maintenance of essential national ideals, to preserve tho peace of the world. 1 earnestly hope that this is appreciated by all who are set in authority over us. This attitude derives its strength neither from defeatism nor irresponsibility: it is simply common —if not quite common enough—sense. There is a growing suspicion, amounting almost to conviction, that in modern war there are no victors; all tho participants are vanquished, by the force of economics, if not by the force of the military machine. Europe—and in fact a large part of the world-—is still suffering from the economic dislocation of the last Great War, and certainly is not anxious to add the confusion of another conflagration to this frustration."