NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23256, 27 January 1939, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

AS GERMANY SEES IT A brief statement of Germany's case was presented by Dr. Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, in a recent speech to road workers. Ho said that the German people had too restricted an area to live in, and had not available the materials possessed by other people. It was known that the foreign press absolutely denied Germany's right to possess colonies. Other peoples could possess them, but not the German people. Every working man would understand that the solution of social problems in such a restricted sphere was harder than it would bo if raw materials were available. Dr. Goebbels made a parable about two lazy workers who were trying unsuccessfully to dislodge a paving stone. A third man came and wrenched the stone out, whereat the others said:—"Yes, but you did it only by force." It was the same with Germany. Thej' had wrenched stones out and solved German problems, given work to all, increased the Reich by 10,000,000 inhabitants, rebuilt the fighting forces, and now critics came and said: "Yes, but only by force."

PLACING GRADUATES The problem of placing graduates in work after they went down from the universities could be stated simply, said Mr. Will Spens, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and chairman of the Board of Education Consultative Committee, in a recent address to teachers. "We cannot find enough men of first-rate ability and personality for the first-rate jobs Ave are asked to fill," ho declared. "I have been chairman of the Cambridge Appointments Board for the last 10 years and that is the constant experience of our secretaries." There was also difficulty in finding satisfactory jobs for the rather weaker men. Regard to the subjects men read in relation to their probable jobs would, he thought, improve the market for them. Those at tlio university should feel that they were doing work which would be of real value to them when they went down. So far as ordinary university students were concerned, 30 years as a don left the speaker convinced that for these the value of a university course depended largely on devoting it wholly or mainly to "subjects fairly closely related to their future vocations.

BEYOND WORDS In England, and I suppose in other countries, too, but certainly with us, there have always been two ways in which people have shown their acceptance of a great and formidable trial like war, says u writer in the Listener. There has been the heroic way, expressed heroically, the way of Hotspur, and Henry V. before Harfleur, and Bupert Brooke in a sonnet. That has always been a fine and honourable note to strike if it be sincere. High-hearted resolve can only find fit expression in high-hearted language. And then there is the other way, 110 less English: the way of expressing one's deepeut and dearest thoughts in language that, taken by itself, is absurdly flat and inadequate, and often even humorous. Such language comes from no failure to recognise the greatness of the demand, but from the intuition that a demand so great cannot be adequately served by words at all. Man's suffering and man's aspiration are greater things than man's language. Every man, finding feelings too deep for words, leaves words alone. But don't mistake him. No less the hero, ho accepts the challenge with a mounting spirit, and like him will bear it out, if he must, even in the cannon's mouth.

TRADING ON GROUND FLOOR " Before we British undertook the making of commercial treaties on a large scale, we were left with nothing but occasional agreements and a great deal of anxiety as to what the future held for our traders and merchants; and the constant chaffering and bickering and bargaining which went on in the embassies and legations led to a great deal of misunderstanding, and ultimately brought no permanent trade benefit to Britain," said Viscount Runciman in the House of Lords. "Then some wise and ingenious fellow invented the most-favoured-nation clause. It certainly does the trick. It provides in the commercial agreements made by Britain with its customers throughout the world, numbering in all, I think, some forty-two or forty-three countries, I a means by which we could be assured that in competition in the great markets of the world we got fair play. The one thing we were anxious to do was to place our merchants and exporters in tho position of selling on the same terms as their competitors. To find themselves blocked out of their markets because of the tariffs 011 those markets discriminating against us was the normal experience. That is really the secret of the most-favoured-nation clause; it enables our merchants and exporters to get into foreign markets on the ground floor."

HISTORY NEVER REPEATS The so-called lessons of history were out of fashion, said Lord Crawford and Balcarres, Chancellor of Manchester University, in an address to the British Historical Association. History was much too fastidious to repeat herself. She was too busy to do so and the modern world could not be worried by maxims from the old. An entirely new situation had now arisen, when the official compilation of false history proceeded day by day. They had long been acquainted with propaganda and tendentious versions of current events, but now facts of the hour were deliberately garbled or suppressed by vast machines designed for the purpose, and 230,000,000 people in Europe lived under a censorship so crushing that not one independent newspaper could exist. The press, the cinema, the stage, wireless, literature, art, academic life — all were bludgeoned into a" stupefying uniformity. What could the historian do to stem this tide of deception which discredited his ideals and smashed up all accepted proprieties of his professional standards? He feared nothing could be suggested likely to produce concrete results, but the historian must never acknowledge defeat. Even acquiescence might be fatal. Nothing was more striking, perhaps moro sinister, than the capitulation of German and Italian scholarship. They must not assume themselves immune to influences which had proved overmastering elsewhere. Scholarship, and in particular the historian, must compete, testing his equipment, scrapping his obsolete text-books, teaching how to contemplate current history and its bearing upon free intellectual liberties of their time.