ARTIST GOES HOME

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1935, Page 8

ARTIST GOES HOME

IDEALS FOR ROMANTIC COUNTRY. A Mexican artist, Senor Santos de Balmori, who has been working in Europe for 16 years, is going home. He will take some souvenirs from the Old World to the New, and this is what Europe has given him. From Scandinavia he is taking information about schemes for the education of workers; from San Sebastian he has gathered detailed accounts of a cooperative club for authors and artiste; from everywhere he has travelled he has records of the work of the S.P.C.A., of which he is an active member. Mexico to-day is fertile ground for every idealistic activity, and her sons have new hopes and new visions. “Through my race the spirit shall speak” is the national motto, and some Mexicans think the time has come to give it a new meaning. Not as a great power on land or sea will Mexico speak; she is to be the home of great ideas and of clear-cut methods of carrying them out. She is to be braver, nobler, more imaginative than any other country. That, at least, is how this artist feels. He thinks there is hope of stopping bull-fighting in Mexico, and he will work for the welfare of animals as well as of people, for the two things are closely bound together. “I know the Mexicans are not angels (he says), but they have learned how to make sacrifices and to suffer, and nothing has ever been able to make them afraid of death. There is no need for them to suffer and die in the old ways; if sacrifice is in store for us still it will be in a really good cause in remaking our country nearer to our heart’s desire, in competition with none, in collaboration with all.” Romantic Mexico of the sombrero and the serenade, sorrowful Mexico of revolution and bloodshed, may all your sons see the ideals behind these things and join together to bring them to pass!