PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY

Southland Times, Issue 19459, 26 January 1925, Page 6

PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY

NATIONAL AND WORLD-WIDE. GREAT CHANGES IN. PROGRESS. LECTURE BY PROFESSOR SHELLEY. “The problems which are facing the world to-day,” said Professor Shelley in commencing his lecture on National and International Ethics to the teachers at the Summer School at Stewart Island on Thursday morning last, “are big and serious ones. It is not such things as diseases of the social bodies, for example, that are going to threaten civilisation, but subtle ones wlfch are going to operate without our knowing it. Therefore we have to analyse them psychologically because it is not the obvious things that are the really dangerous ones. THE MARCH OF SCIENCE. “Thus, it is not the things which Cabinet Ministers and Governments are called upon to do that are going to wreck the Ship of State, but the movement of the individual minds of the passengers carried by that ship. In order to give you some idea of the great changes being wrought in all directions at the present time, let me just for a moment ask you to consider the means of communication which exist today compared with those of 100 years ago. In those days communication was limited to eight miles per hour at the most, but to-day it is possible, by means of radio, to send the same message many thousands of miles in a flash. And so nowadays we have to speak in terms of world wide organisation, and the slightest movement on the market in London will for instance disturb the whole of the banks and incidentally the whole of the farming community of New Zealand if the movement has anything to do with out primary products. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. “The same set of circumstances is c •- nected with our whole existence, and we are going to live in terms of world politics even if some people or organisations or nations do not want to. “That is one reason why we have the League of Nations, which is a world wide organisation, and connected with it is the International Labour Bureau, an extremely important body performing a useful purpose. Yet the New Zealand Government, because it would cost perhaps £lOOO a year to be represented on it, has the idea that New Zealand has nothing to learn, possibly on account of it having been said that it has the most advanced legislation in regard to labour matters of any country in the world. Such an attitude simply means that our Government has a local mind and I say we cannot afford to have that in the affairs of State to-day. In other directions, too, there has been a vast development; take for instance the picture palaces where millions of people attend nightly all over the world and in the space of a few minutes see life as it is lived in Alaska, France or any other country. Thus the minds of the people are being stimulated and ideas created which never occurred to the mind of a person a century ago. And so it is that the mind of the individual to-day is being developed along world wide lines and being opened to a wider vision. “ULTRA-DEMOCRACY.” “Having given that view by way of introduction to my lecture it will readily be seen that it is things as these that are going to wreck the Ship of State or otherwise in the future. So far the world has not awakened to the fact that times have changed and McDougall in his book on ‘Ethics and Some Modern World Problems,’ mentions that we are developing an idea of the control of life which we call democracy, but v.'hich he regards as exhibiting a tendency to develop into ultrademocracy and this he believes is extremely dangerous to life. “ ‘Government by the people, for the people,' sounds all right,” continued the speaker, “and does not appear to work badly in New Zealand, but there are other countries where it does not do so. Take America for example, when the Constitution is universal, but where on account of the negro question Washington refuses to apply it as it should be done upon the basis of one man one vote. It is not my intention to lead you to any conclusions, but just to enable you to study the various aspects of the question for yourselves. Looked at from another point of view, that of industry, we like to think that the industrial captains of the nations are real patriots. Sometimes they are, but as soon as they start to think of business or industry in any particular branch, they do not think in terms of nations at all but in terms of national and international industry. EDUCATION A WORLD FORCE. “And so it is that the interests of the coifhtry are set aside • immediately these people begin to think of their own concern. Therefore, it is essential to keep the instinctive forces behind patriotism and the nation, and at the same time take steps to insure that the nations co-operate with one another and are not cutting, as they are at the present time, at one another’s throats. We have got to find out if the world is going to be safe for civilisation and must seek to develop in the mind of the individual the idea that he or she must be prepared to sacrifice at times for the ideals of human brotherhood. Therefore the place where these subtle new developments are going to be made and understood and a proper fusion of national and i international interests made will be in the schools where the child has no axe to grind, and where the interaction of human beings with human beings can be put into actual practice. • Education is a world force and a controlling factor and as everybody believes in it, it is the only thing capable of bringing about a better understanding of the problems with which we are faced to-day, politically and industrially.”