NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24156, 24 December 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

INDUSTRIAL PROPAGANDA A mind ill-informed, says the Financial News, is one quick to breed resentments. It is, or should be, the main purpose of wartime propaganda to illumine all aspects of the war effort and thereby remove misconceptions. In Britain propaganda has always been suspect, yet the need for it is obvious. Especially is this true of the dissemination to economic and cognate knowledge among the workers now engaged in the great war industries. This particular field of educative work has for long been neglected and, indeed, does not even now receive the attention it deserves. MUSIC OF THE FUTURE "When the order 'Cease fire' sounds and the restoration of peace condition begins," said the Russian Ambassador to Britain, M. Maisky, speaking at the British Association meeting, "I have no doubt that the burning question which will animate millions of human, beings all over the world will be: How to escape a repetition of the great catastrophe through which we have just passed, how to secure immunity from war to our children and the children of our children. There will be no more important and passionate question than this. There will be no other question on which so many, and with so much intensity, will think. Once this mental process begins it will inevitably, although perhaps not immediately, lead these millions to the recognition that the only road to salvation is large-scale planning in international affairs, with all that it implies. Then the various branches of science will play a tremendous role. Then our experience, the experience of the Soviet Union, will greatly contribute to the solution of the problems with which peoples will be confronted. However, that is the music of the future. We should not lose sight of these distant aims and tasks, but we should never forget that good English expression, 'First things first.' "

FIGHTER PILOT In a now book, "Fighter Pilot, a Personal Record," the author has some moving things to relate, among them the following: "I foil to contemplating the quality of courage as it applied to us. i often felt afraid before a job, and, although we none of us admitted it, 1 knew we all felt the same. Once in the cockpit, though . . . the fear turned to the tension of excitement, which was subjugated in its turn to the concentration required in taking off and joining up in the air. From then on one got no time for thinking of anything but finding the enemy, of searching every visible cubic inch of air, and of seeing him before he saw When one did see him, all the tension and concentration of one's body was foe 11 sued in a great leap of the heart, a Hicking-over in the pit of one's stomach. It always made me swallow a couple of times. After that it was a simple matter: sights switched on, range and wing-span indicators checked, gun-buttons on 'fire,' a quick look at the engine-instruments andl timet er. an adjustment to the airscrew control. . . . TlfPn, as one went into action, with one's body taut against

J the straps, teeth clenched, thumb on the gun-button . . . one felt one's pumping heart turn to a block of ice." The author describes how he was wounded and brought down, one arm . crippled, the other temporarily paralysed by a bullet which had * lodged against the spine at the base of the 1 neck, and listened to "the rushing hiss - of the wind over the cockpit" as the 1 aeroplane plunged earthward in swoops j and dives, and heard his own voice as he began to scream—"Muffled, but clearly audible, I heard myself say it, then shout it. then scream it: 'God! God! I'm going to be killed! God!' j Then I stopped screaming and looked into the bottom of the cockpit, think- ~ ing, 'I won't feel it.' , . . And sud- , denly my left arm recovered." b MOUNTAIN PROSPECT Looking back on the days spent on the hills, writes Mr. Frank S. Smythe, 5 the famous Alpinist, in his book, "The , Mountain Vision," the mountaineer . will admit that clouds as much as the , hills contributed to the aesthetic , pleasure. A thousand visions will flash , through his mind. He will remember i the lurid piling up and dark onrush ■ of the storm, the silvery mist of morn- , ing lofting up the sun-warmed preci- ; pice. For me there is one oft-recurring vision which epitomises the beauty and grandeur of mountain and cloud. It is , a view from the foothills of the Himalayas looking northward to the snows. In the foreground stand tall oaks and conifers, with between them the blue of far-off hills. Between the clouds, above the valleys, above the forests, above the blue ranges of hills, above all ordinary things, shine out the eternal snows. And as I gazie in silence and at peace I am conscious of an allpervading Presence and there come to me the splendid words of John Ruskin: "Out from between the cloudv pillars as they pass emerge for ever tbe great battlements of the memorable and perpetual hills." COMPULSORY SMILES One of the invaluable privileges which go with life in a decadent democracy, savs the New York Times, is that of waking up in the morning with a liverish sensation and the firm belief that nothing good can happen; snapping at the little woman as she trots in with the coffee and toast; growling at the younger generation because it is starting off to school with egg on its chin, and, in short, to quote an apt phrase from a recent Fascist Party bulletin issued in Rome, indulging in "doubts, uncertainty, delusions and sadness." A citizen of a free country at such moments is permitted to exhibit "a critical, destructive spirit, which is incapable of rendering clear, positive values to social life, but is only capable of denying them." Social life, indeed! Who, under such circumstances, wants to be sociable? In Italy, under II Duce's inspiring leadership, such things cannot be. Those who give way to melancholy "still live in tne shadow of the past and must be considered the most dangerous enemies." No penalties are mentioned, but they are unquestionably severe. The man worth while, under Fascism, is the man with a smile. About all that those of us who live in a democracy, and who kind of like it here, can say in rebuttal is that, though we don't smile all the time, when we do smile we mean it. <