OUR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 31 July 1935, Page 3

OUR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS.

(By “Silent Peter”). Dear People,— Sweet are the uses of adversity, for they are bringing- science, Church and State together in a widening of the sense of human compassion, interdependence and co-operation, culminating in the resolute determination that social and economic problems shall no longer be slurred over as though they do not exist. The desire is sincere on the part of the churchman, the politician and the scientist to atone for past neglect of brotherly duty; a neglect which has included the need —now abundantly fulfilled—of public condemnation of wastage of natural products and national resources; a neglect which in past days has excusably been interpreted by the submerged tenth as a deliberate conspiracy of silence on the part of the comfortably clothed, housed and fed. Hundreds of thousands of new arrivals to the field of economic inquiry, led thither by the inspiring proclamations of their churches, and whose only guide in the maelstrom of events is the Divine love imbuing their hearts, are appalled at the outset by the multiplicity of schemes springing to growth day by day, each of them guaranteed (by their particular partisans) to transform chaos into order. Standing with reluctant feet where social plans and conscience meet, recent entrant into the field of economic endeavor gaze in discouragement down apparently unending aisles paved with red-hot question marks leading —who knows whither? In such extremity, many more men are now turning to that “cool spirit of science” whose ultimate aims coincide so closely as to be practically identical with those of the finest of our churchmen and statesmen and whose history has proved beyond doubt that organised research is capable, under God, of solving apparent impossibilities.

A well-known writer in London remarks that the prestige gained by scienee in the fields of natural phenomena tends to make her utterances appear worthy of attention and examination even when —or perhaps because —the reader entertains no hope of understanding them. Be that as it may, the prestige of the scientist varies from that enjoyed by the economist or the metaphysician per se, for the reason that the work and the hopes of the mass of mankind are bound up with the great practical benefits flowing- in one continuous stream from scientific laboratories. There is no gainsaying the fact that the majority of workers continue to place their strongest reliance in the things that can be seen and handled. It is therefore only in natural sequence that the pronouncements of science should never fail to carry weight with all classes of workers. Having entered once and for all into that field of life described by the Bishop of Carlisle as the arena “where men strive and groan to free themselves from perils which are not natural but perversions of the authentic human spirit,” the scientist has proceeded direct to essentials and has made an intensive study of the many arid worthy schemes which have been evolved for the benefit of struggling humanity. These various schemes the British Science Guild has reduced to some twenty-four main types of plan; and such valuable residua they have again been able to divide under three principal headings: (a) Monetary reform; (b) industrial planning; and (c) a combination of industrial planning and monetary reform. Yours sincerely, SILENT PETER.