SOME THINGS TO BE THANKFUL ABOUT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26958, 18 December 1948, Page 9

SOME THINGS TO BE THANKFUL ABOUT

Fifth American Article Written for the Otago Daily Times By A. L. Haddon.

The idea that most of the United States is closely settled is speedily corrected on a Union Pacific Railway journey from Portland to Chicago. Through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska, even along the line there are hundreds of miles of uninhabited and apparently useless country. Just now it is white with a fine sprinkle of late autumn snow. But as far as vegetation is concerned, it is as brown and dry as the Central Otago deserts in summer. The trip from San Francisco to Indianapolis (three days) is handled by four different railroad companies. At Chicago it will be necessary not only to change trains but to cross the city by bus from the station of one company to that of the next. When Mark Twain was in Australia he could not understand the absurdity of having to change trains owing to different rail widths.

To-morrow is Thanksgiving, when American homes feast on turkey to help induce gratitude for the bounty of the past year. There will be morning church services, radio programmes and messages from national leaders. Prices of the needed foods would gwe New Zealand housewives a headache. Turkey is 4s 6d a lb, hens and ducks 4s a lb, domestic rabbits, which average 241 b each, are 3s 9d lb, lamb and beef from 3s to 4s lb.

that would not be sectarian and therefore allowable under the United States Constitution. Dr Morrison points out that there have been 14 denominational church unions since 1906, and he sees hope of a further growth of co-opera-tion in the face of a growing need. I Saw To-day The express train San Francisco to Portlapd, running on an unfenced track through the centre of a main residential street of Salem, the capital of Oregon. There were car traffic, footpaths and houses on each side as with our trams. Many papers publish a daily “ Bible Lesson,” which is a passage quoted from the Bible with an appropriate heading, but no comments. Government figures which show that the average earnings of farmers on 160-acre lots is £7 a week. I Heard To-day There is no sense in asking a man what State he is from—if he is from Texas, he will let you know, but if he is not there is no need to embarass him. Teddy Roosevelt had a different idea. He thought Texas so hot that he said if he owned it and hell, he would live in hell and rent out Texas. As these articles are supposed to have a bearing on church matters, I will conclude on the right note! The treasurer of the Ladies’ Aid took the collections to the bank and said to the teller, “This is the Aid money.” To him it sounded like “Aig ” money, so he replied, "The old hens are doing well, aren’t they? ”

Health Department inspectors have, been investigating the selling of horse flesh as beef, and one store is advertising, “We guarantee our hamburg not to gallop.” A Spokane shop offers the following inducements. Choice meats: the management accepts cash, first mortgages, bonds and good jewellery.” On quite a different subject a cute advertisement appeared thus: “ Young woman (Republican) would like to marry young man (Democrat). Object, Third Party.”

Things to Come Senators who profess to be “in the know,” are confidently predicting that the eighty-first congress will at once introduce a free medical service far every man, woman and child irom the cradle to the grave.” Medical men may not particularly appreciate that wav of putting it. Patients will be aifle to choose*” any doctor. Doctors can enter the scheme or not as they wish. Payment of doclorswillbeeither by fee for each case or by agreed salary. Television sets are becoming common in homes, stores and placesScience Service says that 1,000,000 will been in use in 1949. It is anticipated that in five years “video as it is being called, will have replaced radio as now known. Receiving sets are inexpensive. The chief difficulty is in transmitting. A national network is under consideration. Coaxial cable necessary for long-distance transmission is costly. Successful experiments have beeri made in relaying from planes 30,000 ft up, which circle slowly, and each serves an area 400 to 500 miles in diameter. Eight planes engaged in this stratovision could provide a transcontinental television reception. Not Wellington Only There will be many new senators, congressmen, committeemen and officials in Washington soon. So great is the difference between the English and the official languages that a guide has been written for the help of the newcomers. J. R. Master ton and W. B. Phillips have produced, “Federal Prose—How to Write in and for Washington.” It is a masterpiece of nonsensical discuration and incomprehensibility as it shows how to change plain speech into bureaucratic and governmental double-talk. Federal prose never says anything with one plain meaning. There must always be room to wriggle backward, forward and sideways. Here is how these experts describe it: “It is a form of non-metrical composition, apparently English, which can invariably be interpreted as meaning and/or not meaning more and/or less, rather than what it seems to mean.” Try a few examples. “Hens lay eggs”—true, but. they have their off days. So Washington must say: “Egg-laying characterises hens,” or “ hens are typically oviparous.” “ Haste makes waste ” simply will not do. It becomes “ precipitation commonly entails negation' of economy.” “The sun rises in the east” is too dogmatic and must be written, “ solar bodies tend to exhibit with respect to and from the viewpoint of their satellites an apparent orientality of anabasis.”

Ignore punctuation completely: revise and re-revise until all coherence has gone and not a vestige of clarity remains and you qualify in governmentalese. Then you'll say not “ Birds of a feather flock together,” but “ ornithological specimens of approximately identical plumage commonly tend to cluster in intimate proximity." Anyhow, the book of 45 pages sells for a buck and two bits. Minister-Authors

Lloyd Douglas, retired Congregational minister, joined the best-selling authors 10 years ago with .“Magnificent Obsession," a storey about the Golden Rule. Of his next eight or nine novels, “ The Robe ” was most widely read. Its treatment of the Crucifixion was unusual and reverent. Douglas’s new story, “The Big Fishermen,” portrays the burly, blasphemous fishing boss, Peter, what he became and how he influenced others in the service of the great Galilean. Charles Clayton Morrison in 39 years of editorship of the Christian Century raised is circulation from 600 to 40.000 and made it one of the most influential voices in religion and ethics. At 73 he is still a contributor, and has put into book form a series of articles from the Century entitled “ Can Protestantism Win America? ” Those forces bidding for leadership are secularism, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, with secularism gaining ground. This Dr Morrison thinks is due to three things—the secular system of public education, which is secularising not only the school but the scholar, the fact that too many people are trying to live on the faith of their fathers or grandfathers, and the divided state of Protestantism. The task it confronts is too great for it as at present constituted. The 220 denominations must come together around their central and sufficient faith in Jesus as Lord. There is need for agreement on a syllabus of religious education for public schools