Current Comment

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21448, 12 September 1939, Page 6

Current Comment

“The main object of public works is to stimulate consumption at a lime when business is slack and product ion low,” said Air Harold Butler, exdireidor of Hie International Labour Organisation, Geneva, and now warden of Xutlield College, Oxford, in a broadcast talk. “.By enabling people to buy more, they help to keep going agriculture and Hie industries which cater for Hie ordinary needs of lite; houses, clothes, boots, furniture, and so on. \\ hen that object has been achieved and trade is improving, public expenditure can be cut down to normal again. The volume and timing id public works should be regulated by the economic barometer.” * * » » * “To take an immortal soul and turn it into a cog, into a wheel is, according to Christian ethics, a supreme sin, especially when Hie wheel is merely revolving in Hie void,” said Dr. St. John Ervine, in delivering the Essex Hall lecture. “States come and States go. Kingdoms and empires have risen ami perished, but the soul of man remains, imperishable, immutable, and divine, and those who tamper with this divinely conceived spirit will tamper with it Io their peril. H it is not inviolate, then nothing is inviolate. If it may not spread its wings, then all wings will shrivei. 'Those who disbelieve in personal liberty, which is the efflorescence of a gracious spirit, and would substitute for it. a system of society in which the life of the individual is closely regulated from Hie cradle to the grave, the grave being brought prematurely near to the restive and disobedient, will, if they succeed in their design, eventually find themselves faced with Hie problem’ of saving their State from stagnation.” Although the remark “mind and body are one” might be considered a platitude, efforts were being made these days to give it reality, said Lord De La Warr, president of the English Board of Education, in a recent speech. The more attention given to Hie body the better the mind was able Io work. In education it was being found that a line could not be drawn between mental and physical conditions. If it was true at home it was equally true elsewhere. In colonial and Imperial policy it was impossible to separate education, agriculture and health. The test of British policy and trusteeship lay in how it dealt with the problems of social hygiene. I have no time to bother about money.—,)/;• i Bernard Bhaiv.