VOICE OF THE NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 2 May 1925, Page 13

VOICE OF THE NATIONS

SAYINGS AND WRITINGS :: :: OF THE TIMES ::

Super Competition. “We may pack the case into two or three sentences. Super-competition is upon us, impelled abroad by a more concentrated efficiency of the capitalist system., Against this all the formulas of collective ownership are as weak and vain as bows and arrows against heavy artillery. _ Then are we to 'meet super-competition by super-strikes destroying the very foundations of success;'or are we to meet it by super-orginisation embracing Capital and Labour alike ? That is our question, our to-be or not to-be.” -The Observer.”

Capitalism Socialising Itself. “Visibly, beneath our eyes, Capitalism is itself quite spontaneously preparing the way for the State, in some form ‘or other, to take over particular branches of economic activity. The large consolidations of capitalist enterprise are making great fields of action ripe for public control. I acquiesce, therefore, in competition, because' it is so largely engaged in the process of eliminating _ itself. lam prepared to wait, not impatiently, for that movement to do its work. But there are wide fields where consolidation has so far made little progress, and others where consolidation , may perhaps never be practicable. These I should certainly be in no hurry to interfere with, beyond laying _ down minimum standards, with which all business enterprise should be called on to conform.” —“The Present Industrial Order” in Sir William J. Asli-, ley’s new book, “The Christian Outlook.”

Humour and Diplomacy. “I was horrified to hear the other day a member of the House of Commons say that he regretted that humour was appearing in diplomacy. It is the one safety valve of diplomacy. Once, not long since, when certain negotiations were in'a critical stage, and when representatives of various countries thought the whole negotiations would break down, a humorous remark by one of the representatives changed the whole situation, and brought into the harbour the ship that looked like being wrecked. However diverse our principles may be we are all, nevertheless, approachable through those primitive pathways of genial good humour and friendliness that mankind have ever followed when they felt a common purpose.”—Mr. Ramsay MacDonald m a recent speech. The Human Flow.

“Tlie migration of peoples during the ■war and following on the war is by far the greatest racial movement in the history of the world. Over 3,000,000 people of’various nationalities are refugees from one cause or another. There are 1,000,000 Russians in various parts of Europe and about 70,000 in Manchuria living under deplorable conditions. The numbers of the Greek refugees are estimated at 1,400,000. There are still 320,000 Armenian refugees—of which the majority are in Greece and Syria—although, nearly 1,000,000 Armenians have perished ,by massacres, disease, and hardships. Thev possess no country, as the Republic of Erivan has now disappeared. In Bulgaria there are in all about 620,000 refugees, of which the majority entered the country in the latter half of 1924. The Turkish refugees, numbering 380,000, have come chiefly from Greece in the exchange of populations, and about 79,000 of them are established in Eastern Thrace, while 64,000 have gone to. Smyrna. these figures convey’ no impression to the average man of the mountainous mass of misery and wretchedness which they represent.”—Percy Alden, in the “Daily News.” Get the Facts.

“It seems to me that the great demand upon the educator of the future, whether he be the minister in the pulpit, the professor in college, or the schoolmaster in school, will be a fuller understanding of world affairs, ana a steady, more consecrated effort to bring a just understanding of them to the knowledge of those with whom they have to do. As my brother, ‘Woodbine Willie’ (a . well-known cleric), has so well put it in one of his articles: ‘When I hear men glibly talking of what “France” is, of what “Germany” wants, of what “Britain,, has always been, of what “America intends to do; or when thev tell jne that the “British workman’’ is this or that, that the “British business man” is playing a clever game, I always want to stop and ask: “What do you know? What do you really know? Not guess, surmise, suppose, but .know. I see the picture in your mind, but what relation does it bear to reality ?” ’ ” —An American journalist. The Guilty Prisoner.

“If a prisoner confesses guilt to his counsel, it is the duty of the counsel to go on with the defence. Ibe prisoner makes the statement for the purpose of his defence, and not to manufacture a witness against himself. It is counsel’s duty to confine himself to the task of pointing out to the jury that the evidence before the Court is insufficient to support a conviction. He should not go beyond it. Counsel should not lie, and should not impute a crime to an innocent person; but short of that he ought, as an advocate dealing with the evidence, to do all in his power to effect the liberation of his client. He has no right to express a personal opinion upon the guilt or innocence of his ■ client. Counsel should free himself from his individuality’ as a private citizen when he assumes the character of advocate.”— The late Baron Brampton. Science in the Novel.

“It was anomalous that the novel, as the only living form of literature today, should leave entirely on one side the only living spiritual force which the modern world more or less consciously recognises for what it is, and which we all agree in respecting even when we do not serve it in our lives. It was more than anomalous, it was dangerous. The place of the scientific spirit in our life is such that the novel could not much longer remain emotionally blind to it without degenerating into. a kindergarten.”—John Franklin, in the •New Statesman."

The Mystery of “Spare Time.” < “All adults may be divided into three classes. First, those who are very keen on the work by which they earn their living, who run to thi» ■ work as the bridegroom to the bride, and leave it with even more reluctance than the bridegroom leaves the bride,” writes Mr. Arnold Bennett, the well-known novelist, in the “Sunday Pictorial.” “Second, those who are not keen on their work, starting it with reluctance and quitting it with a sigh of relief. Third, those who do not have to work regularly for a living—a large class. The first class, concentrating on their master-passion, detest spare time and become narrow through over-concentration. The second class have usually plenty of spare time, but usually fritter it away as spendthrifts fritter away’ money. The third class are often the busiest and the most rushed of the three, and find it the most difficult to organise —simply because they have had no discipline.” A New Temper In the Church. “A new temper had come ifito the Church. It is not so cocksure about everything in heaven and earth as outsiders sometimes think.- Men are more charitable and chivalrous, and less agitated by differences. The other dav at Cambridge I watched a good Scots Presbyterian minister calmly flicking the” ash from his cigarette while an Anglican professor was throwing the doctrine %f original sin on . the' theological scrapheap. Shades of. Knox and the Covenanters! The ■ world is asking for reality rather than symbol and display.”—Rev. M. • E. Aubrey. New View of Low Birthrate. “The Registrar-General’s return of changes in the population during 1924 shows that we are adding to our numbers less rapidlv than hitherto. This falling off in tlje rate of increase is partly due to a continued decline in the birthrate, which was lower in 1924 than it has'been in any previous peacetime year, but partly to an increase in the general death-rate and an increase in infant mortality. The ordinary conventional i attitude towards these , changes seems still to be one of uneasiness and regret that the birth-rate is falling. The assumption seems to be that the population of these islands could go on increasing at an undiminished rate for an indefinite period without any serious reaction upon the standard of life. It would surely be more reasonable to assume that some adjustment in the rate of growth has become necessary, and to rejoice that this is taking place mainly through a decrease in the birth-rate rather than in increase in the death-rate.” —“The Nation.” The Cigarette Habit in Figures. “Expansion in cigarette output since 1910 has but few parallels in the industrial world. Production in that year was 8.7 billion cigarettes. The average for 1910-14 was about 13 billion, and there has since been a steady annual increase to approximately 71 billion in 1924. This branch of the industry probably now requires more leaf tobacco than any other. Demands in 1924 exceeded those of 1923 by over 6 per cent., with the saturation point apparently nowhere in sight. The new field of women smokers now being developed promises further expansion. Some authorities in the industry predict annual production in the United States of a hundred billion cigarettes within a few’ years. Tobacco, including cigarettes, is one of the few articles in which the value of the factory product in 1921, a year of world-wide depression, exceeded that of 1919. This is due primarily to the steadily increasing per-capita consumption in the United States.” —New York “Commerce Monthly.” 7 The Vogue of the East. “We must not think that the love of Eastern philosophers is merely inspired by the attraction of foreign culture; it denotes something else—the yearning for a new ideal The cult of materialism, which prevailed for _ years, has given way to opposite desires. People believe that Europe has had her day, and that the old Asiatic culture will provide them with new spiritual resources. The feverish activity of these late years.is turning into the longing for religious contemplation and for communion with God. The philosophies of Confucius, of Mencius, and, above all, that of Lao Tseu, seems to answer to those new aspirations."”—Regina Zabloudowsky, in the “Mercure de France.”

Getting Acquainted. / “At a past date which it is not convenient to verify, England and the Englishman were the butts of Continental wits. The Englishman was sluggish, mercenary, and. vulgar,, and his country a barbarous district miraculously existing m the same hemisphere as Paris. But after a-time people got tired of laughing at England. So they invented a 'country full of millionaires and prudery and kinemas and hornrimmed spectacles, and agreed to call it by the quite respectable name of America. Every now and then real Americans turned up and were discovered to be quite charming people. But we had to have something to laugh at, so we went on laughing eft the place we called America, and the real Americans laughed partly with us and partly at us.” —“The Isis.” Music the Tonic.

“The effect of music upon the efficiency of manual labour wa| shown recently in London. During the demolition of a large building the contractors decided to engage a band to play for the whole of one day. It was afterwards found that the strains of music ha.i so stimulated the men who were working on the building that the amount of work accomplished durng the time tliey were ‘accompanied by the band’ was greatly in ‘ excess of any other period. Song is undeniably the greatest tonic in the home. Its effect is ..■'.most as invigorating and soothing to the human emotions as that of the sun Itself. It is the ideal spring tonic.” —Kaja Eide-Norena, the celebrated! Norwegian prima donna.