DEMOCRACY’S LIFE BLOOD.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17246, 5 November 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

DEMOCRACY’S LIFE BLOOD.

companionship of books.

(By Scissibus.) “The use of your leisure, in years to come, will show how your mind has been formed here. Leisure is the time for refreshing mind and body after labour, and is not mere idleness; for, if recreation by change of occupation, it is still occupation. One of the early rhymes of the Labour Movement in England was: —‘Eight hours' work, eight hours’ play, eight hours’ sleep, eight bob a day,”’ said Sir Frederick Whyte, K.C.5.1., before the Convocation of McGill University, in an oration reported in the Montreal Star. His address to the graduates just about to leave the University was most impressive. Sir Frederick Whyte concluded his address as follows :

Use of Leisure. “This is not a bad allotment of your twenty-four hour day, and if you know how to play during the eight hours of recreation (which we do not always get), we need have no fear about our work, our sleep or our wages. These will all be added unto you if you can play aright. Most of us know how to use our leisure in the open air, as horseman, swimmer, sailor, golfer; and therefore the little key which opens your locker at the country club or the golf club is not likely to rust in your drawer. But what of the locker of your minu. ‘The key of that is a little, private instrument of your own. .It opens a casement looking, not outward to the world, hut inward to yourself. It is the key to leisure.’ ■ “In speaking to you, as to men and women entering the great world, I pwt the friendships of University life as its greatest gift. But there is another which runs this companionship very close. IL is the companion ship of books, the memorials ol the Great Adventure of the Pen. which are among man’s highest titles to fame and immortality. _ Montaigne the great French essayist, tells us that at the end of each busy day he would enter his library, close the door upon the toilsome world, and seek the refreshment of his soul in communion with the great men oi t e Pa “From the shelves of his library these friends of his mincl stepped down to commune with him for & while and offered him a happy escape from the perplexities of daily He. And rny father, who had as great a love of books as any man of ins generation, used to tell his class in Ldinouigh, •Sell your bed and buy great books Well, fortunately lor us, we are condemned to choose between a woild without beds and a world without books. It would need the genius oi a J. M. Barrie to depict a world m such a dilemma between the dew and the deep sea. Our eight ho b ot sleep will he-spent on a bed, but the. will be all the sounder and rnoic ic freshing if some of the eight hours ot our play have been spent in the com pany of those wjao have written giea hooks for us.

A National Duty. “The University has a natural purnose. Year after year she takes from ’the nation an ever ' l JJ company of the aspiring h passes them through a process o am ng and sends them forth upon thui. m s sion in the world. the Gm\ersi i is thus the Masterpiece and the mown of a national system of education “It is therefore the duty ol tlm nation to see that her needs arc satisfied and her standards maintained; and tte “Son which falls Jo cheml, .ho University will lack both the tlnnkcis and the artisans of progress. Modern civilisation is the offispring of science in an its forms, and the offispring cannot flourish unless the parent m &u tai “But let us look a little more closely at this creature which we Lv called the child of science. we say that our complex society is scientific, SatSSusTruc in the sense that w lives arc conducted largoly l>y '(J'.'j.J ~_i nrnrPSSGS Oi SClCDtlllG 01i c niThis age of machinery is the triumph . m L is subjected to a pressure Jhich seeks to produce a| sjiidji;. shape, a conformity to certain con mutuality. aU a irame o tends to cream j denial oi mind which is the yen mnui the scientific spun , know--0 aoTun Sio,. ot dead points to the P°lc star of tiuM.

University the Nerve. Centre.

“Every nation is beset by this danger, and the more scientific peoples run the greatest risk. The latter are usually those which live under democratic government which assumes m the citizen an ability to judge policy and public men by adequate standards. How are we to foster that ability and to maintain such standards? Only by education. And since the University is the nerve-centre of our national system of education, it is to the University that we must look for our salvation. “Here within these walls the scarca for truth is, or ought to be, pursued; truth in all its manifestations; and whether it he in the prosecution of research, or in the pursuit of truth in history, philosophy or economics, the University cannot abdicate its function as the home and the protector of all sincere seekers after the truth. As ion- as she fulfills her function the students who go out from here, year bv year, will carry with them the scientific spirit—which is but another name for the love of truth— by the exercise of which they may help to create and maintain the great force of public opinion, which is the lifeblood of democracy.”