UNDERCURRENTS.

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18404, 11 August 1931, Page 6

UNDERCURRENTS.

HERE, THERE & EVERYWHERE.

(By "Gleaner.") PALS AT LAST’ Mr Hoover's plan for a holiday from war debts soon reached the haJs (says an English newspaper). Horatio Nicholls, with characteristic energy, got busy with lyric ani melody, and at Shepherd's Bush Empire Talbot O'Farrell sang the song to an audience that fully appreciated the sentiments expressed. Part ol die chorus is like this— America gives way to England, England gives way to France, France gives way to Germany, And we are all pals at last. It may not be strictly correct, but the audience liked It. LEAGUE AIR FLEET. The creation of a league of Nations air fleet and the abolition of all other air fleets, as well as warships over 10,000 tons In size and. if possible, submarines, were advocated by Lord Cecil In a talk with a number of delegates to the Rotarian Convention at Vienna. Lord Cecil estimated the present expenditure of the world on armaments at £800,000,000 la £900,000,000.

SELF-RESTRAINT, This is by "Lucio" in the Manchester Guardian, but it might have been written about Hamilton. [On being told reproachfully, over the telephone, “You don’t seem to have said much about the weather lately."] You do not like this note of chaste restraint, This censorship, this meekly managed fetter? In days which try the temper of a saint You think the bard had done a good deal better If he, as weeks grew colder, wetter, worse, Had cast discretion to the winds (or weather) And hurled the artless, unencumbered curse, As one who charges blindly, he’l-for-leather? But what's the good? Although ha duly loathes And notes the weather's freaks with moods grown glummer, Can storied rhymes or animated oaths Back to its senses call thia crazy summer? The floods arrive, the weeping heavens fall, The cloudbursts come with thunderbolts attended. We take them In our stride—and, after all, They say “least said" Is also "soonest mended." So If he don't emit the urgent squeal You must not think these trials pass unnoted; O do not think the bard has failed to feel The urge to roar aloud In wrath full-throated I But hark—a note of caution comes unsought, Permit me very briefly here to hint it; Suppose he said exactly what he thought— Do you Imagine any page dare print it? • • • * A DEAN AND RUSSIA. It was recently announced that the Dean of Canterbury would attend a garden party organised by the Society for Cultural Relations between the Peoples of the British Commonwealth and the U.S.S.R. The announcement was followed by criticisms of ths Dean's intention from the Christian Protest Movement. The attention ol the Dean was called to this criticism, and his comment was as follows;— “I am anxious that the peoples of Russia and England should come Into contact. If there is to be contact It must be at particular points, and I had the opportunity of being one of those points. In my view we shou'd try to understand one another and get as much good as possible from one another. A great country like Russia should not be cut off from the rest of the world. "I don't like everything that the Fascists of Italy do, but that does not prevent my going to Italy or from meeting Italians. I don't like bullfighting in Spain, but that does not stand in the way of my going to Spain and meeting Spaniards. And it seems to me that perhaps the best way to stop bull-flghtlng is for peop'e who don't like It to mix with Spaniards and get their point of view understood.

"Perhaps the best way to help persecuted Christians in Russia (and it may be a question how much there is persecution) is to get into touch with the Buslsan people so that they may get to understand us. and perhaps in that way get a different view of Christianity. “Anglo-Saxon civilisation," said ths Dean in conclusion, "has made a tremendous contribution to the world. I believe it has still a contribution to make, and I am anxious that It shall make it. It has many things to teach and many things to learn, and I am anxious that It should learn. It is because ot that that I desire contaot between England and Russia." • ROOTED OBJECTIONS. Mr Baldwin has been telling aid audience that if he threw a sweda and a mangold down on the floor of the House of Commons “not half the members of the Labour Party would know the difference." But it is to be hoped that the ConMrvatlve leader would never forget himself so far as to go throwing agricultural ex'hlbts of that kind about the Mother of Parliaments. Once he started yielding to temptations like that there is no knowing where he would end—he might next be found leading a Large Black Pig into the Chamber at the end of a piece ot string.

In any event, why should all members of the Labour Party be expected to know the difference between a swede and a mangold? It Is quite possible that William Pitt and Warren Hastings were in the same boat—indeed, if all reports be true, thca must have been some evening sessions when i’ltt could hardly have told tin difference between a mangold and a harvest moon.

Statesmanship lias nothing to do wltli Identifying the roots of the flel.l; If it had, there would he a strong rasa for sending heifers to Westminster.