THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22392, 13 October 1934, Page 14

THOUGHTS OF LEADERS

MR LLOYD GEORGE ON WAR DANGERS "PATRIOTISM LOST ITS REASON" (FnoM Ocb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 17. Mr Lloyd George, at Neath, for the Bardie ceremony:— "Britain to-day is suffering from this gash in her young leadership in every branch of initiative; 900,000 of the young men of the British Empire fell in the war with their infinite possibilities. . . . We are still travelling in the shadows of overhanging precipices. The light of peace is not yet shining on the permanent way of the nations. We have wars and rumours of wars. Worst of all, 1 we have preparations for more de structive wars than the world has yet seen, and these preparations are growing. Everybody is afraid of war, and everybody is preparing for it. The nations are spending millions each yeai on , the forging of weapons for human slaughter and on training for the most effective use of them. And women and children are now to be included in the sacrifice. ....

" Patriotism has lost its reason in all lands. It is raving and raging with suspicion and downright fear of the very evils it was helping to create. The old German warrior, Hindenburg, some time ago predicted that Europe would once more became a greater furnace than ever, and pleaded with his countrymen to keep Germany out of the flames. Let us keep * Britain out of the flames and keep mankind out of the flames. . ._ . " Since love of country is becoming demented and developing a homicidal mania, there are millions who believe that patriotism is an evil spirit which ought to be suppressed in the interest of our common humanity. It is a spirit and cannot be annihilated. The problem for all men who still believe that love of one's native land is a beneficent impulse is to reconcile patriotism and peace and demonstrate that they can live in harmony on the same eartli and work together for the advancement of mankind. There is a great rebuilding task awaiting patriotism in all lands—first to rebuild and then to go on building. Let the (nations agree to keep patriotism out of the field of blood. There are other battlefields where it can render greater service and win higher renown. Let it fisrht disease, poverty, ignorance, disorganisation, waste and all the myriad human wrongs and oppressions, and fight them with the weapons of humanity and freedom." SHIPBUILDERS' WARNINGS—NO TRAINED MEN. Mr Robert L. Scott, chairman of Messrs Scott, shipbuilders, at the launch of the new cruiser Galatea:— "There is one point in connection with shipbuilding which I think cannot be too ofteu emphasised in these timesj and that is the very serious shortage of skilled workmen. Shipbuilding during the last 50 years at least has always been subject to perhaps more violent fluctuations than any other industry, but in the past these variations of fat and lean times have seldom lasted for more than one or perhaps two years. A new country might have developed, or a new trade opened up, and ship owners, seeing the possibility of profitable employment of more tonnage, would all be seized with the desire to build at the same time. Usually those booms were followed by depression, but no de pression in the past bears any eompuri son with the 10 years of stagnation from which the industry has just suffered au<l is still suffering. The result has been that it has not been possible to train the proper number of apprentices required in the different trades. " Ten vears is two long generations of apprentices: add to that the number of skilled men, disheartened at secinz

no prospect of continuous employment, who have either emigrated or directed their energies into some other channel and it will easily be understood that the shortage of men is now such that were there a , sudden demand for tonnage, the men to do the work rapidlv would not be available. "The ship yards are here, the engine shops are here, but the trained men ar» not here. Whether something can be done by ship owners —and the Admiralty is the greatest of all ship owners—to direct the stream of orders into a more even flow 1 am unable to say, but if something can be done it would be greatly to the benefit of the ship ownris themselves and the shipping industry as a whole, and it is at least worthy of consideration." FEWER CRAFTSMEN. Mr Henry Robb, managing director of Henry Robb, Ltd., shipbuilders, Leirh, in a speech at the launch of the s* Munmorah: — "I do not think it is quite realised how serious the position of shipbuilding is. A number of craftsmen have gone out of business and very few young men are being trained in the various departments of shipbuilding. To show how serious the position regarding future technical executives is, I may mention that in 1922 there were 372 students in the Institution of Naval Architects. Last year there were 80. In the Scottish colleges in 1922 there were 200 students, and last year only 65." , GETTING RID OF FEAR.

Miss Lilias MacKinnon, an educational authority, at Oxford:— "If you approach your fears in the right way they will be powerless to harm you. Nervousness is both wrong and unnecessary. It is generally nothing but fear of failure or a fear of the adverse criticism of others. . The very word 'fear' should be erased from the vocabulary of every thinking person. Many people, before undertaking any work, suffer agonies of nervousness merely because their unconscious mind retains the memory of a past failure, This sort of nervousness is the particular bugbear of those who have to perform music in -public. They are haunted by the terror of forgetting their music and breaking down, because they once did so before. They will never suffer from the same nervousness again if they observe the infallible rule of forgetting past failures. The sensible person is never v thwarted by failure, but uses failure to attain success. ' "One way to cure nervousness is by a method of pretence—trying to visualise the whole performance and imagining oneself enjoying every bit of it. "Some people are made nervous by the disparagement of others, and must take up a very strong attitude towards that sort of thing. Dame Madge Kendal once told me that in the.days when she and her husband presented plays, they always made it a rule never to read press criticisms of a new piece until a month had elapsed after the first night. That is the right attitude to adopt." COCKNEY RICH AND UNDILUTED. Lord Ponsonby, well-known diplomat and author, in a broadcast talk on "Accents": " The tone of the announcers is greatly admired, and rightly so. I believe that they receive proposals of marriage by post because of their voices. People ail over the country are trying to copy them. "Some people think the Glasgow accent uglv. I disagree. I remember a Lord Advocate with the strongest possible Glasgow accent. I should hardly have listened to his speeches had it not been that I was fascinated by the snap and snarl of his diction. What I may refer to generally as a Scottish accent is an enormous advantage to a speaker. The rolling E, the long vowel, and the occasional'un-English word give a bite and at the same time a distinction'.which arrests attention even in conversation. The same may be said of the Irish accent, although in quite a different way. .' . A bit of a brogue is a great advantage. The sing-song lilt of Wales has a. very pleasant effect. "A Cockney accent is generally condemned. Aga'in I disagree. It is true

that a Cockney accent'is purer and better in a coster than in a member of Parliament. This only shows it is best when it is rich. It should be undiluted. "I like Yorkshire. I prefer it to Lancashire, although I'admit there is' a certain vfrility in the harshsess^of the Lancashire voice. Sussex, when you get it pure, is' delightful. But unfortunately Susaex> like the Home Counties, is becoming infected, by the spread, not of real Cockney, but of suburban Cockney. Wiltshire^, being further off, ; still retains in many of its villages the purity of its native tongue,,and very pleasant it is. I cannot think of one pure county accent which I dislike." ' ' \"" ADULTS NOT PROPERLY grown up. ';. Dr Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, at the New Health Society's Summer School, at Malvern: ; — "The world to-day is ruled by child minds. That is why there is so much war talk. - ' ; "Unfortunately, politicians dp not know any psychology. Many of .them have the psychological make up of an adolescent rather than of the adult, sane, normal man or woman. Very few so-called adults have reached the age of more than 16 or 17 from a psychological point 6i t view. .That, is what makes so many people diflieult in the home. That is why so .many people are always wanting to know what life will give* them. They are not properly grown up. An adult person should be concerned with what he'can give to life." . ■• \~• x :\ ;;... ; . THE SCHOOLS IN SPAIN. Sir George Young, at the. City of London Vacation Course in Education: "Spaniards consider that learning to read and write is the gateway to all happiness. They are prepared to let St. Peter have the keys of heaven, but not the keys of the village school. Under the new Constitution, since the last revolution, education has been made free and compulsory, and the schools are nonclerical.' They have a programme for training 15,000 new teachers, and it is proposed to set up 30,000 new schools. To raise the funds for this programme they have cut the army by half and the Civil Service by half. It is important to remember that we in England are the most retrograde in respect, of reconstruction of all the European countries except France. We have got to realise that we have a good deal to learn in respect of politics in general and democracy in particular.'-' .