NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23839, 14 December 1940, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

IDEALS IN LITERATURE Tt is interesting to reflect that there can be 110 such thing as an anthology of German literature in these times, writes Mr. E. C. bent ley in the Daily I olograph. There would lu> too many .Tews in it. It souruN 100 idiotic to hi' true, but true it K flint "The Lorelei" is printed in modern German songbooks without tho, name of it« author. Heinrieh Heine. You cannot get it out of any German's system; as has been remarked, the very cats in Germanv sing it; but you can protend that its writer is unknown. Much, too, of the best of German poetry and prose has been the work of liberal idealists whose aim it was "to raise a nation by means of culture." not to stamp it down by brute force. To Matthew Arnold, Germany was the land where the spiritual ideal of "sweetness and light" \rns most sedulously cultivated: no one 70 years ago foresaw the Germany of stench and darkness. LABOUR IN BRITAIN

The achievement of national unity in defence of our national heritage and oiir civilising mission in the world was the easier because of the absence of any serious cause of internal division, states the Times in a recent leading article. In social progress political parties were in rivalry, not in opposition; and in industry the opposition of capital and labour was yielding preceptibly to a practical recognition of rights and interests to be gained or held on ethical principles and not force. The last war did, in a measure, establish "a brotherhood of the trenches" which not a few men sincerely endeavoured to transfer to the industries in which they were engaged. A new appreciation of industrial welfare was the result; and tlie same spirit informing politics stimulated a livelier impulse for social welfare. The method of collective bargaining proved a means of developing mutual respect and confidence. It was indeed fortunate that when the international trial descended on us there was no internal strain to impede the closing of the political ranks.

UNIONS AND THE WAR The part played by the General Council of the Trade Union Congress in the development of Britain's war effort is the subject of comment in the Times. "A lively sense of responsibility, quickened by experience of the effectiveness of opinion to require changes, is the restraint on power which the council acknowledges," the Times says. "It is a restraint which will lie!]) to define the place of the trade union movement in national affairs, both in present days and in the future. The movement to-day is very near the centre of administration. In that position it is exerting a powerful influence on industrial conditions and social welfare. It is not acting in a partisan way, nor as tho representative of the political party with which it is associated. As tho head of organisations of working people the General Council has a trusteeship, one responsibility of which is not to wreck the machinery which maintains the national livelihood. Reform it; but not destroy it. In that spirit the advisory association of the General Council with public administration may long continue and with abundant advantage in the testing days of readjustment after the war.''