The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1934. CROSS V. SWASTIKA.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19946, 2 November 1934, Page 8

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1934. CROSS V. SWASTIKA.

By the irony of fnte, the biggest thorn in the side of the champions of Dr. Ludwig Mueller, as Keichbishop of Germany, himself a former naval chaplain, and now an aspirant for the office of spiritual hierarch, is a former submarine officer, once a terror of the Mediterranean as navigator of U-7.'i, namely Pastor Martin Niemoeller. It is this militant member of the German Church who has led the wellorganised church opposition to victory in the struggle to prevent the regimentation of the German Church. Months ago. Dr. Mueller declared that at last Germany had a united Evangelical Church. This declaration followed the consecration of the Beichbishop in the Berlin Italian Renaissance Cathedral, built by Kaiser Wilhelm 11. But despite the paraded strength of the Nazi leaders in the German Church, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, militant Catholic leader, stood unafraid, a towering beacon of courage to those who might become unnerved by the Nazi power. But Dr. Mueller, in suggesting that the German Church had become united under the banners adorned by the swastika, reckoned without the militant spirits within the church; indeed, between COOO and SOOO of 18,000 protestant clergymen, enrolled in opposition to the elevation of Hitler’s friend to the position of supreme head of the Church. They claimed, too, that they were backed by one-fourth of the 40,000,000 adherents of their faith. Moreover, while Dr. Mueller was being inducted into his new office, the flames of opposition were gathering fresh ferocity from end to end of Germany :

Pastors of the National Confessional Synods read declarations saying that the consecration of Doctor Mueller “must fill every Evangelical Christian with the deepest shame and sorrow.” It was asserted that the struggle within the church “involves the surrender of the fundamental authority of the Gospels because of efforts to create a “Nordic-Christian hybrid religion.” It is to be remembered that the new State Church has been Aryanized. Pastors whose blood is tainted with a non-German strain must be ousted.

A dramatic demonstration of loyalty to the old faith occurred in Pastor Niemoeller’s church. Women wept as the former submarine commander appealed to the congregation to be true to the faith of their fathers. “We resent the heresy which strives for a German national church with a pseudo-Germanic wrapper,” he read from the declaration in his hands. “We do this because Dr. Ludwig Mueller, Reichbishop of Germany, and his legal administrator, Dr. August Jaeger, as well as all who follow them, have separated from the Christian community. They have left the Christian Church, and renounced ail their rights in it. The Christian Church must be recognised and complete in its separation.”

It is now announced following almost violent campaigning that Herr Hitler told the bishops he was not further interested in the dispute, which was for the church to solve. Orders have already been issued to the Storm Troops and secret police to cease interfering in church affairs, which they are told no longer concern the State; indeed, the Berlin correspondent of The Daily Telegraph says that since it appears that Herr Hitler has made it clear that his position is one of neutrality, no one would be surprised if Reichbishop Meuller is despatched on a long holiday. Tims ends a struggle, full of deep significance, which has resulted in a reverse of the first magnitude being suffered by the Nazi regime, followed by remarkable demonstrations of victory throughout the Third Keicli. PURPOSE IN EDUCATION. Since it has become the fashion with critics of all varieties to attack the national system of education in New Zealand, it is not surprising that the president of the Conference of Associated Chambers of Commerce, now in session in Christchurch should regard education as a topical subject for critical discussion. It is quite a commonplace, too, to express the view that there is something seriously wrong with the system. As a matter of cold ‘historical fact, there has been something seriously wrong with the schools ever since there has been a system. Education, being a progressive science, is always in a state of flux and we can say with the utmost confidence that as long as the world lasts, there will be somthing seriously wrong with systems of education. The official voice of assembled commerce tells us that the fundamental fault in the higher grades of education in New Zealand has arisen from an undue extension of free education. “Universal free education,” says the spokesman of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, “should stop at the primary school age.” The strongest opposition to the examination system is voiced; although a system of scholarships is suggested as the basis of a system of selective grading of pupils at the close of the primary school course:

“I am convinced,” said this new educational evangelist, "that a considerable proportion of those on the rolls of the secondary schools and

universities have not the mental equipment to enable them to get any real benefit from the training given them and that their presence there is a bar to successful work by those who possessed the necessary aptitude.

Doubtless as long as the critics who speak for the Associated Chambers of Commerce view the educational needs of the country through tiie narrow eyes of purely business interests, substantial support will be accorded the demand that except for the selected few, education should finish at the conclusion of the primary school course. It may he true that numbers of pupils in secondary schools, and some in the universities, as the spokesman of Commerce insists, have not the mental equipment to enable them to get any benefit from the training given them. It may be true that the presence of many in the higher circles of education is a bar to successful work by those who do possess the necessary aptitudes; hut no enlightened country which has any regard for its future, would dare risk its very existence by attempting to solve the issues raised by the voice of commerce, not by designing new courses of education to suit ail varied aptitudes of its school population, but by denying the great majority of future citizens all entry into higher education at the close of the primary school course. The president of the conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce seems to have overlooked the vital fact that democracy is a heritage that needs constantly to be refreshed, not merely by the training of scholars, but by the addition of better lives. Associated Commerce seems to have lost sight of the world shaking changes that are taking place in the world around them. The antiquated idea that Ihe only qualification for higher education should be mere capacity for scholarship of the academic type, have gone forever. Obviously the new deal in education must lie different from the old. The essential objective of education must include training for citizenship, as distinct from training for the professions or even commerce; in other words, education must prepare the potential citizen not so much for the life of business as for the business of living. And the State, notwithstanding the protests of Associated Commerce, must assume the responsibility within its means of assuring adequate public education for every potential citizen who within a very small span of years will be expected to become an intelligent and efficient member of the new democracy.