NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23489, 28 October 1939, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

GOOD MONEY AND BAD > The money in your pocket is good because of the weight of public opinion which, in other words, is faith in the nation and its people, writes Mr. Lee S. Trimble, an American journalist. That public opinion must lie kept unimpaired if this country is to avoid the awful inflation that has paralysed other nations. Bad money can cause Uiore misery and harm than bad men in office. An enlightened body of citizens. who know enough to recognise dangerous financial policies as they appear, is a necessary safeguard to insure sound money, the finest flower of a healthy government. LOW FARM INCOMES There was a greater danger to American democracy from low farm incomes than from war abroad, declared Dr. O. O. Wolfe, president of the Kansas State Farm Bureau Federation, addressing a farm conference representing eight States. I)r. Wolfe said that a situation under which farmers, who made up 24 per cent of the population of the United States, received less than 10 per cent of the national income, could not continue indefinitely. Pointing out that before the European war brought about a substantial boost in prices of farm products the farmer was receiving only 74 per cent of a "parity" price, Dr. Wolfe said:—"The only way the farmer can increase his income with prices is to produce morei But in so doing he'is depleting his capital stock—the soil. If it is necessary to continue such practice in this country the day will come when the farmers' 'pay dirt' will play out and agriculture—the nation's basic industry—-will be in a ruined state. To-day that is a far more real threat than most of us will admit —an even greater threat to our democracy than the European war."

RUSSIAN AID TO GERMANY "I do not for one moment believe, writes the former diplomat the Hon. Harold Nicolson, M.V., in tlie Daily Telegraph, that Stalin would agree to send, or Germany agree to receive, a Russian expeditionary force. Each side is afraid of deriving political infection from the other. The presence of Russian troops on German soil, as the presence of German troops on Russian soil, would not be acceptable to either Government. The German people possess a hereditary suspicion of the Russians and have for the last six years been indoctrinated with a special suspicion of the Bolshevik Army. Joseph Stalin, whose main preoccupation is with the maintenance of his own ascendancy, would be most unwilling to despatch an army upon adventures outside his own frontiers. Nor is it likely that Russia could ever supply Germany in any very large quantity with the war material that she might need. if we assume, therefore (and it is a grim assumption), that the Rnsso-German pact is something more than a mere treaty of non-aggression and implies some form of co-operation in the event of war, then there is no reason to conclude that Germany will derive from this association. such an increase in power as will enable her to resist a war of long duration.

HISTORY IN THE SCHOOLS "There are two schools of thought regarding the part which the teaching of history ought to play in our educational system," said Mr. Roger Hinks in a recent 8.8.C. talk. "On the one hand are those who subscribe to the memorable doctrine of Mr. Henry Ford that 'history is bunk.' And 011 ( the other hand are those who have reflected that history is not simply a recital of old, unhappy, far-off things, but the very reason why we are what. we are. It is not surprising, then, that those who share this view should place the study of history at the centre of their curriculum', and make all the other disciplines its tributaries. This worship of the historical consciousness is not without its dangers, aud they are subtler and more subversive than the blunt hostility of Mr. Ford. The excesses of 'historism' —like so many other intellectual excesses—may be observed in the German educational theory and practice of the post-war period; and the reaction from this frame of mind in the Germany of to-day, much as we deplore it, is not without its logic. A complete surrender to historical fact necessarily involves a surrender of moral values. Everything that hns happened—right or wrong, fruitful or poisonous—is sacred; the historian — and therefore presumably his pupil also —abdicates the right to make ethical judgments. It is enough to have demonstrated what actually happened."

IT.CAN HAPPEN HERE "British social institutions express, in their very shape, certain precious values which, in the last resort, can only be justified 011 the basis of Christianity," said the Rev. Oliver S. Tomkins in a recent 8.8.C. talk. "Among them are the whole idea of equality before the law, the right of every man to go to law without the verdict being prejudiced against him from the start; the idea that , men may not be imprisoned without due trial; the idea that all fully responsible citizens have some sort of a share in government; the idea that the governors may be turned out of power when they cease to represent the people who put them in; the idea that men have a right to voice their opinions freely, even to follow any religion they like, so long as it does not involve lawlessness —and so we might go on. Britain not only owes much in what we call roughly democracy, but much in her national life, which is far older than democracy, to the fact that men were constantly seeking to make public life and political institutions into a framework round which Christian living could be built. But the impulse to inspire social lifo for Christian ends has weakened and decayed. The story is a long and complicated one, but we see it most clearly when we look at countries where the Christian ends have been definitely rejected and other ones substituted; where justice is not thought of as the right of all men, but simply as a way of bolstering up a nation or class; where speech and writing have no freedom unless they are in line with official propaganda; where minorities have no rights at all over against the will of dictatorship. We miss, the whole difficulty if we simply point a scornful finger at other countries and say, hypocritically; 'That kind of thing can't happen here.' It can, and it does; only it happens in ways so near our own eyes that we cannot see them."