NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24104, 24 October 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CRITICS OF THE CHURCH I have received, writes ihp Bishop of Norwich in the Sunday 'limes, a not unfamiliar kind of letter saying that ". . . people are looking to-day for a load from the Church . . . love in act inn, not dry dogma or cold j theology." Disappointment with the Church is constantly expressed whenever the clergy arc not saying and doing exactly what each critic favours. The critics forget thai the threefold ministry of the Church does not represent the whole Church. They, too, if thev are baptised, are members of the Church; their strictures may be falling upon themselves. AMERICAN APATHY John Smith, U.S.A., looks around, listens here and there, reads 'the Letters-to-tho-Kditor columns everyday, and wonders, says the New York Times, how devoted to their democratic institutions the American people are. himself included. They like the country, he know-.; they live here through preference, most of them, at least, and thev approve its institutions in the main, when they take time to give them a thought. But how far are they willing to go to preserve it, to keep their freedom and their way of life and 1,1 help the rest of the once free world to lie lice again? He hears voices crying from the housetops, warning Americans of the dangers confronting them ■■!"({ urging them to go all-out to meet tltn.se dangers. And he notes that some of his friends do not lift their eyes much above the second-storey windows to see who's .shouting. We Americans have had good luck, John Smith admits. But have we had enough of it to undermine our spiritual health? Have we lost our love of country and our will to survive as a nation? SINGAPORE BASE DELAYS Sir Laurence Guillemard's statement that the decision of the British Labour Government in 1924 to suspend the construction of the Naval Base at Singapore did not delay that construction for a single day is not, 1 regret to sav, in accordance with the facts, says Lord Stanhope in a letter to the Times, from November, 1921. to June. 1929, I was Civil Lord of the Admiralty, and therefore the member of the hoard responsible for the construction of that naval base. When construction wms again decided on in 1923 the personnel which bad been brought home had to he sent out again. It was then found that many of the ditches dug to drain the area to free it from malarial mosquitos had fallen in, nnd it proved a more difficult task to complete this work than if it had never been started. Of course, that was not the only work which had to be restarted. Speaking in reply to a question in the House of Commons on February 11, 1923. the first Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Bridgeman (as he then was) said that although little direct monetary loss had resulted from the suspension of 1924 there had been considerable indirect loss, and that the loss of time would he at least H years. Actually I nnd another Commissioner of Admiralty signed the main contract on behalf of the board on October 8, 1928. That was only just eoou enough

to pot the work so far advanced that; I the Labour Party, on coming hack into I office in in - .'!), wore unable again to stop the main contract. To have done so would have involved the payment of heavy compensation. It did, however. stop all other work. As it was, the Naval Base was only officially opened for use early in 1935, although at that time far from completed. SECONDARY EMPLOYMENT "My view is that it is worth while to save personality, though over large parts of the world to-day that is not accepted. All the 'unconscious drives' of our modern society are toward the mass mind, and to oppose them we have to set ourselves lo check the unforeseen results of our vast economic development." said Sir Hector Hetherington. principal of Glasgow University, in a recent address. "1 think there i- something we can do within the economic sphere itself. We have lo develop within the sphere the technique of the secondary employment. .More and more people will spend their working lives in industry in jobs which are not themselves contributory in any way to the development of personality and are. indeed, hostile to it. The ordinary work of the world will he done in considerably fewer hours per day and week, and there will be much more leisure. It i> important that a great deal of that leisure time should be devoted to secondary employment, primarily in food getting -horticulture —or in one or other of the arts or crafts of primitive society. It is important economically because this industrial world in which we live is a very unstable world. There are strong moral and spiritual reasons as well. Our educational policy and system will have to be thought about from this new point of view, li is no good in a society like ours to equip people only for a highly specialised job which may at any moment leave them. We have to teach them to live a life in which they can 1 fend for themselves. It is absolutely vital that we should make room in our social organisation for the initiative of individuals and groups. I do not look forward with any pleasure at all to a society in which the whole of industry is centrally managed. I am not anxious, for the health of the community, to see central control so extended that it would be difficult, even in the economic sphere, for individual enterprise to make its way."