NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23226, 21 December 1938, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK "I was reading the other day," Lieu- , tenant-Coinmander Fletcher, M.P., informed the House of Cpmmons, "a story of a man who went to his friend , and said: 'I wfls given a slap in the face this morning. What do you advise mo to do about it?' The friend considered the problem, and then said: 'Well, if you were given it, I should advise you to keep it.' That is the position in which we are at the present time. We receive slap after slap in the face, and there is nothing we can do except accept them. This Government must really have a crick in its collective neck from keeping on turning the other cheek." LAST WAR'S GRIM LEGACY "I have, 20 years after the Great War, still on the books of my Ministry 420,000 war pensioners, and besides v them about 500,000 dependants," said the British Minister of Pensions, Mr. H. Ramsbotham, in a recent speech. "There > are on any day In the year . about 2000 patients in my hospitals, . and I wish that some of those who, , after the danger of the recent crisis has : passed, glibly demand firmer stands and stronger measures would spend a few ' days going round those hospitals, and ! seeing for themselves the wreckage that ; still remains from a war fought nearly a quarter of a century ago. I am still ' paying out in pensions about 1 £.39,000,000 a year, and the total expenI diture on war pensions from 1914 to : March 31, 1938, amounts to £1,275,000,000, or double the whole of i the National Debt before the war." SOME ACT OF EXPIATION Striking a serious note in a foreign policy debate in the House of Commons, Sir Edward Grigg said:—"Under all the gratitude to the Prime Minister which is felt —and that gratitude is almost universal and very deep—nrider the almost universal senso also of relief, there is a strong feeling in the heart of this country, in the mind of this country, if I may quote the words of the 'General Confession,' that 'we have left undone' certain things 'which we ought to have done,' and that in that respect 'there is no health in us.' That is, I believe, the feeling of the great majority in this country at the present time. The conntry really wants to be called upon for a "great effort, for an expression of its spirit. It wants to liberate its soul. It wants to perform, I believe, some act of expiation, because it is not entirely happy about what has happened. It wants to take some strong and new resolve, and it wants, above all, to prove that it is once again what it has always been and what it ought always to be, a fearless champion of freedom and right in the world. That, I believe, is what the country at this moment wants, without distinction of party." MR. SPENDER SUMS UP There is still discussion on the general policy adopted by Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. J. A. Spender's concise summing up in the Yorkshire Observer. should therefore be of interest. Mr. Spender writes: —Major Attlee, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Lloyd George would have us know how much more valiant they would have been if they, and not Mr. Chamberlain, had had the handling of the Chechoslovakian affair. Apparently they would have insisted, in the teeth of Lord Runciman's report, upon the Sudetan Germans remaining within the boundaries of Czechoslovakia, and for the sake of this they would have risked a world war, which, incidentally, would have destroyed Czechoslovakia. r lhey are convinced that, if we had done this, Herr Hitler would have given way. It is possible, but in that case we should have stood committed to doing in Central Europe what we have failed to do in Ireland and are unable to do in Palestine —i.e., compel two races to live together under the same Government when one of them is determined not to do so. We should have had to do this in the face of German opposition backed by an overwhelmingly greater force than we or any possiblo ally could have placed on the spot. I would plead with progressive politicians to think carefully before they rank themselves as opponents of the policy of appeasement. It may fail, but the blood ought not to be on their head if it does. Burke said that it was "no inconsiderable part of wisdom to know how much of an evil it is necessary to tolerate," and the unhappy fact wo have to digest is that, in its present condition, Europe presents us at every turn with a choice of evils. Let us be careful that we do not choose tho worse. MODERN MATERIALISM "There is very little philosophic materialism in our country, but n terrible amount of nnphilosophical materialism. We live as if comfort and the money that brings comfort aro really more important than the relationships of confidence, trust, loyalty and friendship," said Dr. Temple, Archbishop of York, in an address to the members of the Church of England Men's Society. "In Germany it has taken a different form. There the fundamental trouble is that men are craving deliverance from a national humiliation, and they have found it by tho swing over to an immensely intensified national self-consciousnoss in race, nation, blood and soil. Germans are not finding their, guido to life in tho God of Love, and His purpose for His children. Therefore, because they have no principle by which they may fitid their way through the pcrploxities of life, they accept, as representing Him,, the Fuehrer, to whom they ascribe, to all intonts and purposes, infallibility; and, in practice, to question the Fuehrer's decision is the same thing as treason. While wo English aro not liablo to that form of trouble, and there is a deep fund of religious feeling in our people, it cannot bo said that wo have made any deliberate attempt to try to understand and guide our. lives by the principles of Christ. There is n real danger of a crumbling away of our standards under the pressure of tho same forces which elsewhere have made a direct and aggressive attack. Our danger is all the greater because the attack is insidious, and not open. There is no doubt about the answer. Wo must become more constant and courageous in our witness, which must be expressed in tho fulfilment of all our duties as members of a Christian society."