NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24084, 1 October 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PERIL OF DISUNITY If there is one outstanding lesson to ho learned from the tragedy of Europe during the past year, writes Mr. ( harles I). Don in the Johannesburg Star, it is that deep-seated disunity, whether in a great nation or a small one, is the prelude to attack and defeat in time of war. The house divided against itself is stealthily being destroyed before even the enemy strikes it down. DEFEATS AID FINAL VICTORY The Russians may suffer heavy defeats, writes Mr. .). A. Spender in the Yorkshire Observer. Some wise men are very busy in wiflning us about that. 1 think we are in some danger of overdoing these cautious. Russian "defeats" wore a groat contribution to Allied victory in the last war, and may be again "in this war. It. was one of the principal disasters of that time that Russia was not present at the Peace Conference to obtain the reward of her stubborn effort, prolonged over throe years, in the common cause, and we must resolve that this shall not be repeated. BEGINNING OF LIBERTY The beginning of liberty is to believe in people as individuals, with all their capacities for growth and intelligence in spite of their mistakes, yet always to challenge any man's claim to complete knowledge of power, writes Mr. Malcolm \Y. Davis in a report to an American Commission to study the organisation of peace. What we call democracy is the evidence in government of these principles, the expression of a people's respect and responsibility for themselves. This is the groundwork of the world we want. Throughout the different representative States in the world, there appears this common idea of a people's right to rule themselves. With the right, go risks, because it includes a prerogative of rulers —the right to be wrong. So it implies that any majority will keep open for its opponents the public right to speak their minds, to organise parties and elect legislators, and in turn by persuasion to form a majority, The members of such a society guarantee to each other the privileges and the safeguards that tliev together want. HITLER VERSUS STALIN The Germans must continue their offensive, writes "Strategicus" in the Spectator, and they will develop their campaign by a series of surges, on sectors that promise the maximum advantage and the minimum difficulty. They undoubtedly expected, by this time, to have made greater progress toward a decision, at less cost; but it now seems probable that they were prepared for a campaign, while hoping it would neither be protracted nor too expensive. Their main goal is not territory, valuable as it must ho to a nation so short of some of five essential supplies of modern warfare: it is the destruction of the Russian Army. Conversely, the Russians' objective is not so much the conservation of territory as the maintenance of their army in full fighting vigour. The Germans have already made great territorial progress;

and it would he folly to underestimate I the seriousness of the throat which j their campaign constitutes for Russia. But it remains true that there is, so far, no evidence of the Russian Army weakening. On the contrary it seems evident that they are not even content with a passive dciensive. I hey are still skilfully and vigorously counter-attack-ing the enemy whenever his blow seems to be wavering or spent. 1 here is no reason to doubt that they are inflicting heavv losses upon the Germans, even if the estimates given are not taken too literally. German and Russian correspondents, either implieity or ex illicitly, attest this conclusion; and it may yet prove the vital factor in the offensive. There are few, if any, posi- I tions that cannot he taken if the assailant will pay the price. The question is how far Hitler is prepared to go; and we may rest assured that having taken charge of the offensive he will pursue it to tlie end, even if it should mean his own. TITILLATING THE APPETITE "After all, it is not what we eat, but what we digest that counts, and digestibility depends not only on the physical property of the meal, but upon the anticipation and realisation by the mind of the tastiness of what is partaken," said Lord Dawson of Penn, the eminent physician, speaking in the House of Lords. "The more eager your expectancy of nice tasty food the more gastric juice you will secrete in anticipation of what you are hoping to enjoy. If you give your dog a biscuit you may throw that biscuit on the ground and let the dog got on with it, but there is an alternative method and that is to break the biscuit up into several portions and then offer each portion to the dog to eat. There will be a vast difference in the effect on the dog of those two methods. That has been proved by experiment, and interestingly enough by one of the most famous scientists, the late Professor Pavloff. of Russia. When you hand the portions of biscuit one by one to the dog, you produce in him a sense of eagerness and anticipatory pleasure, and if you compare the secretion of his digestive juices in those two instances you will liml that in the latter instance the digestive juices that ihe dog will produce will be several times greater than if you throw the biscuit to him and lot him get on with it without any interest. If that is true of the dog, how much more true must it be of civilised man ?"