THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21994, 1 July 1933, Page 13

THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

CAUL TO INDUSTRY BODY-LINE BOWLING. (From Qua Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 28. Mr T. A. Higson (a member of the M.C.C. Test Team Selection Committee) at Manchester; — , , , , “ It jg a debatable point whether bodyline bowling is in the best interests of cricket. It seems quite clear to those who study the game that when it is used it will act detrimentally on cricket. It is to be hoped, therefore, that it will rtot be pursued. Whether, if it is pursued, the batsmen will enjoy it as much as the public, I do not know.” NO NEED FOR DEPRESSION. Sir W. Larke, director of the National Federation of Iron and Steel IJanufacturera, in London: — “ I say without hesitation that technologically British industry is unsurpassed by any country in the world. I would ask our hasty critics to reflect on the triumph of British industry during the war years. In adaptability to circumstances, in enterprise and energy, it was unsurpassed then and is,unsurpassed today. In a world of contracting markets the problem must be approached from the co-operative point of view. We should co-operate to prevent uneconomic competion. No one individual, industry, or country can become prosperous at the expense of the bankruptcy of another. I should like to see a new crusade to preach the prosperity of industry. I have every confidence in the future, and I believe that we in this country 'have no need to be depressed.” TO PROMOTE TRADE. Sir C. Higham, at the Publicity Club", advocated the creation of a Ministry of Publicity, not for propaganda purposes, but tor the frank advertising of facts:— “The time is opportune for Great Britain to take the lead of all the nations of the world by establishing a department of publicity for newspaper advertising, which the Board of Trade could use for the furtherance of trade. The Ministry of Health could use it to spread knowledge relating to infant mortality and the prevention of infectious illnesses. .The War Office already uses It for recruiting purposes. The Board of Agriculture could make it the medium of agricultural education, and to persuade the public to consume more of those three great essentials of life—milk, meat, and bread. Hie Foreign Office could employ it with a view to making friendly international relationships, and for the .Ministry .01 Labour it would become a great industrial megaphone so that the confusion and misunderstandings which we are all sutiering from to-day might be clarified or remedied.” COURAGE NEEDED IN VICTORY. Mr Winston Churchill, at the annual banquet of the Royal Society of St. England is not a bad country to live in. With all its faults, it is still the beet country for the duke or the dustman. . , “ Here it would never occur to anyone that the .banks would close their doors against their depositors. Here no one questions the fairness of the courts of raw and justice. Here no one thinks or persecuting a man on account ot his ieligion or his race. . . . “ Here everyone (except the criminals) look upon the policeman as the friend and servant of the Here we provide for poverty and. misfortune with more compassion (in spite of all our burdens) than any other country. Here we can assert the rights of the citizen against the State, or criticise the Government of the day without failing in our duty to the Crown or in our loyalty to th “ Witfiin a 50-mile radius of this spot, in the heart of England, there dwell more people, except perhaps around New York than in any other equal space, ihey form the freest, richest, the most prosperous, most law-abiding, and the roost goodnatured cofhmnnit/ alive. . . , “ T!iis ancient mighty London in which we are gathered is still indeed, was never more than to-night—-the financial centre of the world- “ From the Admiralty building, half a mile away, orders can be sent to a fleet which, though much smaller than it used to be or than it ought j; to be, is still unsurpassed upon the sens. “IF WE LOSE FAITH.” Mr Churchill continued:— “ The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without, xney come from within. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self abasement into which we have been east by a powerful section ot our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion bf our politicians, f . “ They tell us that our day is done, om sun is set, and night is coming on. iliey declare—some with crazy exultation in their tones-that the decline and all ot England's glory is at hand. If that be true, it will be our own fault. “ Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If We lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide ana govern, if we lose our will to live, then, indeed, our story is told. , “ Stripped of her Empire in the Orient, deprived of the sovereignty, of the seas, loaded with debt and taxation, her commerce and carrying trade shut out by foreign tariffs and quotas, England would sink to the level of a fifth-rate Bower, and nothing would remain of all her glories except a population much larger than this island can support. We will never accept such a fate! We ought, a» a nation and Empire, to weather any storm that blows, at least as well as any other existing system of human government, We arc at once more experienced and more truly united than any people in the world. It may well be that the most glorious chapters of our history are yet to be written. When we think of a>! we owe to dur forefathers, of whose toils and struggles we are the heirs, whose prowess and forethought gained ns the noble and splendid position we still hold among the nations, and which in our lifetime we have maintained m the greatest war that ever raged, we ought to rejoice at the responsibilities with winch Destiny has honoured us, and be proud that we are guarlinns of our country m an age when her life is at stake. HERITAGE OF ENGLAND. The Bishop of Norwich, preaching the Shakespeare Memorial Sermon ju tile Parish Church, Stratford-on-Avon, on bt. George’s Day:— , .. “ We are rightly proud of our heritage, and bound up witli our tradition of order and liberty are many salient features of national expression, three of which are found in our literature, our religion out politics in the old meaning of that deteriorating term. . , “ These three, we may say to-day, are represented for us in the work and power of Shakespeare, in our English Bible, lyin" open in the hands of our Established Church, and in our Enghsh law, which binds together our expanding Empire of which many are thinking when, on St. George’s Day, .they press for wise schemes of emigration. ll\ese three representative institutions do eloquently and strikingly point' to the developments of different aspects of our own national genius. “ But, these traditions and possessions of our# are not for selfish enjoyment. Our

American friends share our Shakespeare, the whole English-speaking world our Bible, and the spirit of our law reaches far, far beyond the country of its birth. “The right course is to build; first to build up something new and valuable, using, so far as may be, the old material as integral to the new. We still need the best in the old, just as we need the best in the new. We want the good wherever we can find it. In every field it ia not tradition that must go; it is the worship of tradition. Tradition and progress are not at variance.

“ Shakespeare shows us the eternal, un- , changing world of human nature. It ja this recognition of the eternal things which will give a purpose to life, national, collective, and individual; we have to say this in every and not least in our own when the rutile pessimism of the early chapters of Ecclesiastes seems to be settling down upon many, perhaps especially among the young, in their public and personal outlook and to rob life of its hope and beauty. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! Can we see the best of Shakespeare’s dramas acted, can we watch, his supreme grasp-of humanity in all its undying phases and be content .to say, All is Vanity? ” “ENCOURAGING RACE SUICIDE.” The Bishop of Exeter (Lord William Cecil), in the Diocesan Gazette:— “Rumours have reached me that there is a movement in this county to establish clinics which shall encourage that terrible race suicide which has already reduced France to comparative impotence and now threatens our beloved country. Too often religion and science find themselves opposed to one another, but in this matter, at any rate with regal'd to our own country, religion and science are at one. “Except tor a small section of Christians who have, only in my lifetime, changed over to believing in race suicide, Christianity haa always taught that the great object of marriage was to encourage the procreation of children. We always pray for it in the marriage service of our Prayer Book; and the Roman ♦ Catholics who, after all, are the vast majority of Christians in the world, have never varied in their denunciation of this practice of birth control. If Christianity ■*> has condemned it through all these ages Christianity has, in this matter, the support of the Jewish religion, which is equally opposed .to it. . . . “If we turn from religion to science we find that, according to the great Darwinian theory, the whole evolution of the world has been acomplished by the survival of the fittest. Few Englishmen w'ould deny that their own race was the fittest, but even a foreigner would have to allow that if it was not the fittest it was at least one of the fittest. If it is the fittest, or one of the fittest races, to encourage race suicide is not only a crime against the nation, but a crime against humanity, and must be condemned by science. “ However much I condemn race suicide, I have the greatest sympathy with people who find in the present economic distress great difficulty in bringing up a large family, just as I have the most intense admiration for those who, not studying their < own comfort and pleasure, make, great sacrifices to . raise a numerous family, though every sacrifice they make may bring to them a reward beyond their expectation, for no one can tell how great their children may be, how useful to humanity,” “FOR THAT GOAL WE STRIVE.”

Mr de Valera, at. a service in Dublin in commemoration of the leaders of the Easter week rising in 1916 who were executed, re-emphasised his demand for a Republic:— “No words can fittingly commemorate the sacrifice of these men except, indeed, the words of a new proclamation restoring the Republic they proclaimed, and gave their lives to defend. But the time has not come for that, and we must content ourselves to-day with the declaration that it is for that goal rye strive, and that we shall not rest until we have reached it. It is a resolve not to be lightly taken, and it may not be easily or soon accomplished, but it is the only resolve worthy of a race that has never admitted conquest. “While we are working to achieve it, let it be made clear that we X»e|d no willing assent to any form of symbol that is out of keeping with Ireland's right as a sovereign nation. Let ns remove those forms one by one so that this State that we control may be a Republic in fact, and that when the time comes the proclaiming of the Republic may involve nO more a ceremony than the formal confirmation of a status already attained.