NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24136, 1 December 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

INTELLECTUAL INDOLENCE

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, but so few of us to-day seem to understand the nature of liberty, writes Sir Ernest Bonn. Perhaps it is that we are too comfortable, that life is too easy, that we are not up against tlw> sort of hardships which faced the Victorians. Education has taught us to read, and among the results one grieves to notice that thousands of middle-class people use that precious facility to join a book club and to instruct someone else to send them once a week or once a month something to read. They cannot be bothered to decide what is worth reading or what they would like to read: they are quite prepared to pay somebody else to settle this difficult question for them. In the same way they like the wireless because it is convenient, it gives them something to think about or something to occupy the power to think, which they themselves are too lazy to use. FREE DISCUSSION Speaking on the "Art of Self-Gov-ernment," Mr. G. M. Young said in a recent address: "If discussion by talk, by writing or by print were limited, the political parties would never be able to frame a programme because they would not know what people were thinking or what they wanted. And when they came to legislate, they would not be warned of practical difficulties here, the sentimental objections there, and all the things which a free government has to take into account if its legislation is to work smoothly. Government would gradually drift further and further away from public opinion. Intelligent people would cense to take any interest in politics if they were not allowed to discuss them freely, and so, first gradually, and then rapidly, the whole thing would slide toward a dictatorship—one party in power for ever, and keeping itself in power not by limiting, but by banning discussion altogether." THE IRISH LANGUAGE Mr. de Valera has confessed to the Gaelic League that he is disappointed with the slow progress of the revival of the use of the Irish language, says the Manchester Guardian. He went so far as to say that the Gaelic League was swimming "against the tide of popular opinion." His disappointment is the sharper because he had expected that political independence would foster enthusiasm for the language, and 20 years of self-government had falsified (lis hope. Is this surprising P Was not Mr de Valera's confidence rather too simple? The revival of the Irish language was part of the remarkable renaissance of the early years of the century. That renaissance, distinguished by such names at Yeats and "A.E.," Synjje and Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde and John MacNeill, rescued an ancient culture which seemed in danger of losing its individual strength and colour. The political prospect was discouraging. Gladstone's effort for Ireland had been defeated. To speak Irish wr.3 one way of defending your country. To-day Ireland is in a very different! position. There is no external coercion!

to stimulate her spirit. Whether her language lives or dies depends on herself alone. All the fierce excitement has gone. Ireland has self-government, but she has lost the romantic glow of a struggle, centuries old, against a powerful neighbour. There ss compulsion, but it is.used not to forbid but to order an Irishman to speak Irish. This fact is significant. Human nature does not take kindly to dictation, least of all human nature in Ireland. The Government would be wise to try gentler methods LONDON THEN AND NOW Speaking of the difference in London from the last war, Mr. James Bone, London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, writes:—The rarest thing now is to see in the streets a wounded soldier in hospital blue. The stations are different: no crowds of anxious women at the barricades straining their eyes as the men on leave from France come down the platform and few tearful partings at the gates. It is the.young soldier now going to his camp who impresses on his mother to be sure to write and tell him she is safe through the raid. There are legions of women in new uniforms in the town. The W.R.N.S. and the W.A.A.F.'s wear uniforms of the same colour as in the last war, but ambulance drivers of the L.C.C., the A.P.S., A.It.P., Women's Mechanised Transport Corps, and Women's Voluntary Services are in uniforms that are new to us. Bus girls and postwomen, too, have a new garb. The steel helmet was rarely seen on citizen's heads in the last war; now the majority have them, and the police and air wardens have special helmets. Food restrictions and the blackout and the cuts in petrol have drastically changed London's social life, but in the long lull since the last raids things have been slipping back. Several theatres and music halls are open at night and restaurants are keeping open later and there is much entertaining in the big hotels and the night clubs have plenty of custom. In a hundred ways you are aware of a slackening in tin? poise and energy of the people who have done so much and come through so much in the inferno of last winter. Will they be able to regain that will and power when the skies are red fit ni<iht and the Portland stone in the West is pink with the light from the burning town?