NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23320, 13 April 1939, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

WHERE AMERICA STANDS Writing from Washington of "America's Purpose," Mr. Erwin D. Canham says certain views on international relations are already well clarified. They are substantially as follows: —First —the great majority of the American people, and of Congress, wish to remain in isolation, free from foreign "entanglements." Second —at the same time, the same people admit fatalistically that if a world war breaks out An\erica will probably be involved, rather sooner than later, and certainly to the extent of furnishing supplies in the most active way. Third—there is no doubt to which side the supplies and the active assistance would go. Opinion in the United States, even in the most isolationist sectors, is emotionally unneutral. It is not at the 1914 pitch, but certainly at the 1917.

ANGLO-SOVIET RELATIONS Obtuse prejudice has influenced the relationship between Britain and Russia more than it should, and signs that the British Government has come to realise the value of closer contact with Moscow are very welcome, says the Spectator in comment on the recent British trade mission to Moscow. Russia is evolving in her own way, and it was for some years a bloody and brutal way. But we British are concerned with Russia's external rather than her internal policy, and since 1921 she has unquestionably not merely maintained a peaceful attitude herself, but been a factor for peace in Eastern Europe. Internally, moreover, if the situation has been rightly assessed, the era of purges is over, and the country is pursuing an increasingly normal path of development. There is every reason why Anglo-Russian contacts should be strengthened in London, at Moscow and at Geneva.

WOMEN AND DICTATORS Growing concern is manifest among women of the British teaching profession lest totalitarian doctrines —to which "feminism is anathema"'—may permeate the educational world and upset plans carefully laid since the beginning of the century. The problem was frankly discussed when the National Union of Women Teachers met in conference at Eastbourne recently, Mrs. A. McMillan, the newly-appointed president, drawing attention to the need for the exercise of the greatest vigilance in the protection of children against influences which would rob them of their heritage of freedom. So far as Britain is concerned, Mrs. McMillan pointed out, the struggle to establish sex equality in the teaching profession has gone on unremittingly for many years. But, "it is impossible for the most sanguine among us to deny," ghe said, "that, in a large and increasing number of countries, women are being beaten back and degraded to those levels from which, at the cost of much toil and suffering, after many generations, they were rising."

TIMELESS CRICKET TESTS Victory atfd defeat are of little consequence as compared ij-ith the lessons that are writ large over the monstrous score-board, of the fifth test match. England versus South Africa, says the Ti^neSf' The most important of them is that a match without the discipline imposed by ; time—time which carries with it its own problems of strategy and tactics—is null and void of all the elements which go to make cricket the enchanting game it naturally is. Time must bo a decisive factor; but it must be time defined in terms of playing hours and not of an arbitrary number of days at the mercy of whatever the weather may decido to do. A suggestion that hours should be limited has been proposed by the South African Cricket Board of Control, and it is very much to be hoped that it will be adopted. The objection fhat limited hours may mean the drawing of a certain number of matches loses its weight when it is put in the scales against the abysmal prospect of further games played after tho manner of tho atrocity at Durban. Besides, a drawn game earn be very far from being a negative game; and a lastwicket stand, which has no hoj)o of winning the match, but an outside one of saving it, is as well worth watching as tho hitting of many sixes and the accumulation of hundreds of runs. A defensive stroke against a quickly turning ball is a satisfactory sight even though the scoreboard disdains to take the slightest notice of it, and the more that bloated Durban score is studied tho more sinister does tho perfection of the pitch appear.

DENMARK WALKS DELICATELY Balanced a little uneasily on tho north-west corner of Germany, its traditional equilibrium disturbed by tho Reich's foreign policy, Denmark is fighting with the weapons of diplomacy to ensure tho maintenance of its independence, writes the Copenhagen correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor. Conciliation with Germany on tho one hand, weighted by a strengthening of those ties which bind Denmark to tho rest of the Scandinavian countries on tho other, is seen here as the policv Denmark is to pursue. It is a balancing feat which is difficult to maintain. In official circles, the penotration of National Socialist influence is minimised. But investigation shows that this penetration is spreading and is giving tho Government a difficult problem, for Denmark must find an answer to the auestion of how to stamp out foreign interference in its internal affairs without actuallv offending its powerful neighbour. National Socialist penetration is seen in tho growth of secret party organisations in Copenhagen, where a recent Court case revealed that the National Socialists had succeeded in obtaining important influence within the ranks of tho Danish police, in German loans for Danish farmers in South Jutland, in "trade pressure" by which Germany has forced Danish firms to dismiss Jewish employees, and to sell only "Aryan" goods, and in the increasing influence of German advertisers over the Copenhagen press. Against all this, Denmark has to fight cautiously. Arrests of spies, the banning of the anti-Jewish paper Der Sturmer. and tho trial and sentencing of openly treasonable propagandists, show that Denmark is fully awake to the dangers which surround it. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Denmark intends to pursue a very conciliatory policy.*