NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23418, 7 August 1939, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SAFEGUARDING FREEDOM . Human liberty and political and economic freedom, the right to worship, the right to speak and act, are not apportioned, safeguarded or destroyed by the application of any geographical or racial rulo of thumb, reflects Mr. Frank L. Perrin, an American journalist. These rights are inherent, natural, universally vouchsafed. They are lost only when they are surrendered by the voluntary or involuntary action of their possessors. That is what all tlio peoplo of liberty-loving countries must realise to-day, tomorrow, and henceforth. It is only as our right of possession is lightly regarded, or as wo ignorantly, selfishly or carelessly yield or delegate to others the duties and responsibilities which are our own, that we approach the border line which, onco passed, can never be recrossed. BRITAIN'S NEW MILITIAMEN Summing up the results of his interviews of the new British Militiamen examined in a West London suburb, the interviewing officer, Major B. T. Reynolds, says the' attitude of the Militiamen was willing and matter-of-fact. They approached their military service in an attitude of, "Here's a job to bo done. Lot's get on with it." This attitude was common to all classes, and I noticed that men of all classes were chatting amicably together while waiting at the door. They were obviously better educated, brighter and more intelligent than the average run of men one met in 1914-1918. The majority of •• them, even those who had left at 14, had attended evening classes or some kind of cultural activity since leaving •school. A high proportion of them had alert, inquiring minds. All in all, a very good lot. PLEASURE, IN POETRY "1 7 "To enjoy a sentimental ditty is better than to have no poetic experience at all," said the Archbishop of York, Dr. Temple, in a recent address. He added that it was useful to confess one's defects of appreciation. "I have led several people to the discovery of a wide range of literature," ho said, "by an open confession that Milton's longer poems bore me stiff. I fully believe that the fault is more mine than his, but I have found many people who, being bored by Milton, whom they possibly had to writo out for impositions, and knowing the esteem in which he is held, have come to the conclusion that they must not expect to find any pleasure in poetry. By telling them that I share their incapacity I. have encouraged them to seek enjoyment where I havo found it—in Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Browning, parts of Wordsworth. Tennyson's lyrics, and Shakespeare." DOMESTIC SERVICE To get housewives who have servants to check up tlio working conditions in their own homes is a long step toward improving the labour standards of household employees, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Tho Women's City Club of New York has spotlighted this through a six-month experiment in regulating domestic labour. Onco let a housewifo discover by her own count that her household helper is working 80 or 90 hours a week, and she is shocked into eagerness to fit her household to the simple standard of approved labour conditions sponsored by this club. The club has found that many women honestly think they are model employers—until they stop systematically to check themselves with tho club's questionnaire. The set of rules worked out two years ago by the club calls for a maximum of 60 hours a week for servants and a minimum wage of 40 dollars a month. On the whole, the women reached by the club's questionnaire havo been surprisingly eager to co-operate. And since the more specific move to secure better working conditions was launched six months ago, comments and requests for the questionnaire havo como from women in many States, from both housewives and domestic employees. This is good news. They are finding that fair labour conditions can be maintained in homes, to tho advantage of all concerned. " THE CROSSES, ROW ON ROW " It has been a frequent thought among English-speaking peoples that if anything could provent another world war it would bo a realisation of tho carnage of the Great War, particularly- as it is expressed by the vast fields of graves in Franco. That this view is not necessarily common to all nationalities, however, is shown by a writer, in the Toe H booklet, "Gardens of Flanders." "There is a sort of solemn joy, to the British mind, about theso cemeteries," he savs. "They speak of suffering, but still more of resurrection." Later ho says: "But there is a danger in these many-coloured gardens, too. Where death so horrible —as in countless cases it was—is hidden in so much beauty of living things there is risk that thoso who como after may think too littlo of tho 'wrong' and allow 'laughter and a song' to obliterate tlio deep anger which should also possess their hearts, and to blunt tho determination of their wills to provent any such tragedy as world war again." The French dead are buried in huge pits and havo no individual graves: "Their i common memorial, standing in tho centre of tho ground, is an obelisk of stone on tho top of which a gilded French cock struts and crows defiance eastward toward tho traditional enemy. And, if tho visitor will take tho trouble to talk with a Frenchman about our, own cemeteries, ho will find that they? are considered too expensive. The soldier is too near tho daily thoughts, of Franco to need nny such commemoration." In the Gorman cemeteries there is neither thanksgiving nor defiance, but "death in grimncss and vnstness, a field sown with stout black crosses,', battalions in open order on tlio grass:" ' In tho German view, as expressed by tho cemeteries, "death is inevitable, tho cynical giant figuro which marches with a platoon and will destroy it to a man; tliero is no room here for tho groon earth to spring in renewal and to praise God with tlio living jewels of flowers."• I