NATIONAL AMITY.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17242, 29 October 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

NATIONAL AMITY.

ESSENTIAL OF CIVILISATION. (By Scissibus.) Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, New York, and chairman of the important Commissions to East and West Africa, in which the British Government cooperated, gave an important address on “Neighbourliness Among Nations” at the World Federation of Educational Associations at Toronto, of which the following is an outline: “What is neighbourliness?” is a Lit more searching inquiry than “Who is my neighbour?” Neighbourliness is at the very heart of world peace and civilisation. Until we define It and make it the basic principle of social relations we shall have wars and still more gigantic war.

Not Size—But Opportunity.

Neighbourliness does not mean that small countries are to be large or large countries to be small; that mountainous countries are to be level, or level countries are to be mountainous. It does not even mean that peoples or countries are to be of the same wealth and the same power. What the desire to have others equal to ourselves means is that they shall have equal opportunities to realise their own capacities with all the goodwill and encouragement that we can give them. This is neighbourliness among nations.

Contrast the peace, confidence, and goodwill between Canada and the United States on one boundary; and the anxiety, the bitterness, the friction, and the outbreaks between Mexico and the United States on the other. Why the tremendous difference ? In one case there are equalities of opportunity in both countries as well as the sincere desire for such equalities. In the other there are all kinds of inequalities and the lack of a desire to have the inequalities removed.

But these conditions are not limited to the Americans. They are in every part of the world. They are sectional, national, international, and intercontinental. Never was the call for neighbourliness among nations more real, more acutely needed. What is wanted is a synthetic approach to the general social condition of the people in each nation or country. This means a determined effort to” group the facts concerning the masses, and then an equally determined effort to improve their condition. This is a tremendous undertaking, but the money now spent on armies and navies would pay a large part. The Four Essentials. On the basis of 25 years of research in America and Africa and some studies in Europe and the Near East, 1 believe the essentials of civilisation are:— 1. Health and sanitation, meaning not only the prodigious task of curing disease, and the still more prodigious responsibility of eliminating preventable illness, but also the most important of all health undertakings, namely, the recognition of health as the basis of a clear mind, sound character, and spiritual appreciation. 2. The appreciation and use of environment, material and human. In more usual terms this involves the answers to the old but elemental questions of “How to make a living?” and “Who is my neighbour?” 3. The transfer of the heritage to the race from one generation t.o another, referring especially to the functions of the home as the chief agency of the transfer. This essential is primarily concerned with the status and welfare of women and children.

4. The processes of recreation — physical, mental and spiritual. These include not only the effective use of leisure Lime for the development of humanity; they require also that work, play, art, education and religion shall share the opportunity and the responsibility of quickening the mind and enriching the spiritual appreciation of individual and communty. The realisation of these in every nation is neighbourliness among nations. These are the tests of the equalities and inequalities of opportunities which are basic to peace or war, justice or injustice. Death rates are said to he the best available “social register” of general attainments. Why is the death rate in New Zealand of 8.8 the lowest in the world? Why should the rates in Ceylon of 27.8 and Chile of 28.4 be three times as high? Why should the average length of life in Sweden and the United States be almost twice that in India? There are, of course, differences of climate and other natural conditions, but there are also differences in the effectiveness of social organisation. Notable reductions in death rates have already been made under British influence in African colonies and India, and still greater reductions can be made. Similar changes are being effected in every civilised country.

If health, effective use of material resources, mutual regard of neighbours, and the appreciation of women and children are the foundations of civilisation and neighbourliness, then provision for recreation and re-crea-lion are the cap-stone of human attainments. “Making a living” is a necessity, but making life, and the fullness of life, physical, mental and spiritual, is the real purpose of living.

Education for Neighbourliness. But the hope for this magnificent programme of world neighbourliness is, probably, in education. Education for neighbourliness and civilisation must be genuinely adapted to the essentials of community life. The teacher must be vitally aware of those essentials and must see to it that they colour the teaching of all school subjects, the discipline of the pupils, the administration of school affairs, and, above all, the relation of the school to the neighbourhood. Consciousness of community on the part _of educators is the key to the education now required in every part of the world.

Community health, community resources, community heritage, community re-creations are the essentials of civilisation, and they must be made the objectives of education and all altruistic endeavour.

The British Air Ministry announces that cases have recently occurred of aircraft flying over the H.ythe “ danger area,” and the attention of pilots is drawn to the necessity of avoiding this area owing to the danger caused by "•'Ol6OlllOB and kites.