NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23470, 6 October 1939, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SINCE HITLER ARRIVED Since ITerr Hitler obtained power in Germany, notes the Sunday Times, ho ' has turned not only his own land but : the whole of the Continent into an armed camp. Before 1933 the talk was not of re-armament hut of disarma- 1 ment. Hopes were bright that, when the economic crisis subsided, the nations could devote their growing , wealth to constructive policies for human welfare. On all that Herr , Hitler's policy has closed the door. And it will remain closed till the policy is altered. Militarism —the doctrine that only brute force matters, and consequently that a State's one aim should be to develop and employ a greater brute force than any other's —does not exist to-day in Germany for the first time. It had its main home there before the last war. Very largely it brought that war about; and to end it was in 1911-18 our most important war-aim. CHURCH OR GREEN FIELDS The oft-repeated statement that a man can worship God in the green fields under the dome of heaven just as well as well as he can worship in church is no doubt profoundly true, writes "Commentator" in the Liverpool Post. Only let it be honestly admitted that very few of those who assert this do what it says. I am quite convinced that only a negligible proportion of those who spend Sunday golfing or hiking or motoring, set out on their day's pleasure with any intention to worship God, or any desire to do so, and that they return home in the evening without having had a single thought of eternal things all day long. Some of the worship of God in church may he insincere, but the degree of insincerity is inconsiderable, compared with that of those who delude themselves into thinking that a pleasant Sunday afternoon on the golf links or in a comfortable car is an act of worship, or induces a worshipful spirit. HEALTH AND AGRICULTURE "The cost of ill-health is staggering. The particular problem is to increase the consumption of nutritive foods. Public health planning and agricultural planning cannot be considered scprately,"" said Dr. Keith Murray, research officer of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, speaking at the British Social Hygiene Council Summer School. "Farmers in the last 15 years have changed their production methods and reduced their costs to an amazing extent, mainly through economies in the use of labour. Ihe output per person in the industry has risen 40 per ceiife in the last 15 jeais, which is probably more rapid than in most industries. A decrease in the number of persons on the land is not a sign of decadence, but of progress. Distribution is not as efficient as it might be. Milk distribution is one of the most necessary to reorganise. In Oxford three-quarters of the milk supply is delivered by 10 per cent of dairymen, which means that nine times as many are necessary to deliver the remaining 25 per cent of the supply. Subsidies to producers should be given to stimulate the output of those foods which improve national health, such as milk not wheat and sugar. This year we are giving about £14,000,000 to subsidise wheat and sugar, while the subsidy for more milk is only about £750,000." AN ECHO FROM 1922 In 1922 Russia and Germany healed war wounds by signing the Treaty of Rapallo. A letter on the subject written at the time by Katherine Mansfield is forwarded by a correspondent. The letter states:—l am very interested that Kotcliansky thinks the Ger-man-Russian treaty very good. Manoukhin and all the Russians here say it means war in the near future, lor certain. For certain it is the beginning of Bolshevism all over Europe. The Bolsheviks at Genoa are complete cynics—they say anything. They are absolutely laughing in their beards at the whole affair, and treating us as fools even greater than the French. The French at least have a sniff at what may happen, but we go on saving, "Let us all be good," and the Russians and Germans burst with religious glee. I was staggered when I heard this. Manoukliin's partner here, a very exceptional Frenchman, started the subject yesterday, and said why did not we English immediately join the French and take all vestige of power from Germany. This so di.sgusted me, 1 turned to Manoukhin, and felt sure lie would agree that it simply could not be done. But ho i agreed absolutely. And they declare - j the Russians hero —we are in for ani other war and for Bolshevism ; "partout." It's a nice prospect, isn't iL? SAUCE FOR THE GANDER Dr. Hermann Rauschning not long ago stood high among Nazi leaders. As President of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig, he stood close to the Fuehrer j and the rest of Nazidom's chieftains I until their anti-Semitic and other outI rages drove him into uncompromising opposition. In his book, '"I he Revolution of Nihilism," ho says:—Other nations, into whose veins the poisons of Nazidom have not yet entered, must rally to smash Nazi Germany's dictatorship, "which draws its destructive energies from the directionless revolution, a revolution merely lor revolution's sake." It is in*the forces of true conservatism, according to Dr. Rauschning, that hope of deliverance lies. Despite this statement, lie does not rule out the possibility of the eventual overthrow of the Nazis, not by conservative elements, but by a Socialist revolution "aiming at the classless society under the dictatorship of the proletariat." He gives the following succinct and illuminating summary of one of his talks with the Fuehrer before their break: — Hitler had told me that morning what was his view of the values of treaties. He was ready, he said, to sign anything. He was ready to guarantee any frontier and to conclude a non-aggres-sion pact with any one. it was a simpleton's idea not to avail one's self of expedients of this sort, because the day might come when some formal agreement would have to bo broken. Every pact sworn to was broken or became out, of date sooner or later. Reviewing the book, a writer in the New York Times comments: —May be the Muscovites, knowing that interesting little quirk in the Fuehrer's mind, will show him, one of these days, that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for tlie gander.