TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20248, 17 July 1937, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

An Ominous Legacy No one who watches from a distance the passage by the South African Parliament of one enactment after another restricting the rights and liberties of the native population can be easy about their future consequences. First the native is deprived of his vote in the only province where he had it and compensated by the creation of a Native Council to which, it is promised, questions affecting him will be referred. Yet, without pretence of consulting that Council, laws determining his whole future are put through Parliament. The Native Trust and Land Act has made the way clear for the social and economic segregation of the native population, though its failure to provide adequate land on which he can “lead his own life” is notorious. Now the Native Laws Amendment Bill threatens him with further repression. The Daily Dispatch of East London, says it will “deliver the native peoples of South Africa, bound hand and foot, into a state of complete subjection and slavery.” These ave strong words, but the Bill is ugly enough to provoke them. It will secure the ejection from the towns of all natives in excess of those required for labour purposes, and will confine not only those that remain but all buildings erected for their benefit, schools, churches, missions, and the like, to the locations. The ejected native, detribalised by town life and inadequately' provided with alternative means of living, will be forced to accept what conditions he can get as a rural labourer, if indeed he can be so absorbed at all. It is not surprising that the East London paper should “appeal to the conscience of the Europeans of South Africa to say that such a repressive piece of legislation shall not pass.”—Manchester Guardian. Liberal Education

That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who —no stunted ascetic —is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. —Professor Huxley. Freedom and Discipline

“ Freedom has, in popular opinion, been set over against discipline as if one is naturally the enemy of the other,” said Professor E. T. Campagnne, Professor of Education in the University of Liverpool. “ They are not the same, but complementary to each other, and plain men may be impatient with philosophers whose refined definitions suggest that freedom is discipline in holiday dress, and that discipline is freedom in disguise. Maybe the day will come when we shall hear few praises of freedom, and then discipline —-M l. nIF a its kirn”