OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19803, 19 May 1934, Page 9

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

SOME INTERESTING VIEWPOINTS On Wearing Uniforms “There is, I think, every \ objection from every point of view, to political or any other organisations aping and usurping the dress, training, and discipline of military organisations,” writes Sir Wyndham Childs in “Labour.” “Their actions stand condemned by laws, international and national by customs and by convention, and the sooner they are suppressed the better will it be for the well-being and constitution of the country. It is, in my opinion, a matter of urgency to take steps to prevent misguided people from acting in such a manner as is calculated and likely to produce a collision, from which they will only be extricated by the intervention of the forces of law and order, between those who hold divergent political views. They are invoking internecine war in our own country when they should be striving to prevent wars of any description. British Artists “Fifteen rooms at the Royal Academy have been filled with 1600 exhibits—painting, small sculpture, jewellery furniture, embroderies, armour, manuscripts—everything, including even watches and keys, that can help to tell the story of Britain’s art development. The crowds that flock to see this show will not find thmselves in the triumphant and sometimes aggressive blaze of colour which made previous foreign displays so spectacular. British artists have always been rather tentative in their use of colour—or else garish. But they score over the whole world in power to express with sheer drawing the most beautiful poetry imaginable—sometimes with the quality of a dainty melody, at others as melancholy as a sighing wind. Their craftsmanship, too, whether in the actual execution of a picture or the intricate assembling and jewelling of a tiny watch, stands equal, in the main, to that of any nation.”— Mr Gui St. Bernard, the art critic of the “News-Chronicle.” Observance of Lent “ ‘Some people,” said William James, *seem to have no indoors,’ God gave the mansion of our soul; He leaves us to furnish it,” says the “Church Times.” “We are so occupied with trivialities that we neglect to consider our soul’s health. We may become so spendthrift of the precious hours that we seek to make time pass in order to relieve the intolerable tedium of empty lives. The dread of boredom drives the idle to live rapidly as if mere speed were the true test of the value of living; the strenuous are tempted to spend their labour on that which satisfieth not, and in their busy living to lose the reason for life itself. Lent recalls us to matters which have to do with the ultimate meaning of life; God does not show us that until we turn to Him. The great principles of the observance of Lent are the same for all, their practical application varies with individuals.” Humanities in Industry “Employers are trying to recognise the human element in industry. They are faced with new obligations and responsibilities, and in meeting them they find encouraging response from their workpeople. This growing sense of partnership and mutual interest is, I believe, one of the most hopeful characteristics of this changing world in which we live. The ordinary working man does not grasp the theories about which we all hear so much to-day—-rationalisation, mechanisation, technicological unemployment, and automatisation, but what he can understand are life’s simple satisfactions—work in congenial surroundings, an adequate reward for honest labour, relief from undue strain, and the hope of security when the day is done He does not want to hear the threat, ‘lf you don’t work you cannot eat,’ but the promise, ‘lf you work you can eat.’ ” —Mr Robert R. Hyde, M.V.0., Director of the Industrial Welfare Society.