TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20422, 12 February 1938, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Rebuilding the W orld If they deplored their own times they barricaded in advance the gateway to active life, said Mr Erich Mendelsohn (the architect of much of the new Palestine) in an address at Manchester. They condemned themselves to be the slaves of events of which they should be the master. The new world had to solve afresh all the problems which men had set for themselves, he went on. There was the political problem in the relations between States as neighbours and competitors; the social problem in the fluid relations between the classes in any land; and the cultural problem in the relations between the everchanging reality of daily life and the permanent values of religion and art. Because the architect felt the strueutral element to be his true essence, it was a necessity to reflect on the structural constitution of the world as a whole, especially when the structure had entered upon a phase of necessary change. The old was foundering; 1 the new was in process of birth; and they must recognise the broad | lines of the historical drama in which each of them now played his | part. The rebuilding of the world had already begun. | Pursuit of Happiness “ The dictators do indeed assert, and probably in all sincerity, that peace is their chief desire. And there are, of course, innumerable organisations for the promotion of peace. Yet even peace is not wholly satisfying as an ultimate aim. It has about it a suspicion of placidity and sloth. Often it is thought of as mere absence of war. There is nothing about it active, positive, initiative and inspiring. Happiness lies beyond and above peace. ‘The pursuit of happiness’ was deliberately adopted by the farmers of the American Constitution as the final aim of the American people, and in every school in the United States boys and girls are taught to repeat this clause in the Constitution. “How often, too, do our own Sovereigns on great occasions affirm what they have most at heart is the happiness of their people! And what statesman does not have as his highest ambition the hope GlaJ. Le ciaj’ have contributed something to the happiness of. hia country? And happiness in infectious; it unites. Others are naturally drawn to a happy man or a happy nation. The happiness we had in the Coronation attracted other nations to us. It is not —or should not be—self-centred and selfish. It is something in which all can share. Happiness is, therefore, a bond which binds men together—and binds them in that kinship of souls which it is the very object of the Congress of Faiths to create."—Sir Francis j Younghusband.