VOICE of the NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 120, 18 February 1928, Page 15

VOICE of the NATIONS

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

These Dog Races. “I am not happy when I think that 60,000, 70,000, or 100,000 people can attend a dog race at night, I am not a killjoy—indeed, I pride myself on being a sportsman—but I am not happy in a situation which reveals these uncomfortable features.—Mr. J. H. Thomas, M.r. A Dismal Place.

“If a census could be held on the question, ‘What are the most dismal places in the world?’ it would not require a very bold man to wager that waiting-rooms on railway stations would be easily the winners,” says the “Westminster Gazette” is a lively leaderette. “For this reason, the suggestion made by a writer in the “Times” that the railway companies should lilt these rooms front their deadliness by employing young artists to decorate them is very welcome. The remarkable thing about most waiting-rooms is that anyone can bear to wait in them. Some pleasant frescoes in each of these haunts of despair and darkness would do much to make up for the state of the floor, the fireplace, and the seating accommodation, especially if the windows were cleaned occasionally so that a little light might fall on them. Such a scheme would provide work for young artists and a powerful advertisement lor the railways. Of course, the irescoes need not be of too high a quality. If they were, there would be a positive danger in the idea, since some people might miss their trains every dav tluough pausing too long in the waitingroom.” “Between Equals.”

“Every artistic conversation is beIwen equals. A person gets from another. person exactly as much as he or she is natively competent to understand, and no more. You can only tell a person what that person knows, and nearly all artistic work, and nearly all higher educational work, is an appeal to the memory of a person in order that that person may recollect something which he or she has forgotten. Prose is unable to deal with extremes of speed. It cannot portray slow movement; and beyond"a certain wavelength, as it were, it cannot portray a swift one. But the slow movement of a line of fine verse is far slower than a snail’s progress; and the quick movement of a very quick line of verse is as quick as lightning. Prose v cannot deal with these things without falling into boredom on tire one hand or hysteria on the other.”— Mr. James Stephen, in an address to the English Association at Manchester University.

What Congregations Expect. “Intelligibility is what a congregation,” is the view of “W.C.8.” 'in the “Birmingham Post,” "has a right to expect from a preacher, and to be intelligible a man must speak in the language of liis own time. Yet who has not been irritated as well as perplexed by hearing a sermon uttered in the language of fifty years ago? Sermons that ignore the changes that time has wrought in speech and in ideas are among the worst misfits of all. Heresies that died out ages ago are treated as ■if they were still to the front and had not yet been refuted; terms that long since ceased to be charged with life and meaning are used as if they were battle-cries of today. Heresy, no doubt, reappears in fresh shapes as each generation comes and goes, but only those can overcome it who know how to speak in the language of their own time and can give out the truth that never changes in terms not of the past but of the present. The sermons of a bygone age did the work which that age required ; they cannot do the work of an age that thinks and speaks in ways of its own.”

Greyhound Racing. "The pursuit of a mechanical hare by greyhounds who have no idea of where the winning-post is or when they have passed it cannot be classed as a sport like horseracing. It is a slightly more animated form of petits chevaux. As a sight and a noveiuy it may have an interest, but what has really given it its enormous hold on popular favour is the facilities it offers for betting. This makes it a social issue of verv considerable moment. In some foreign countries and in parts of the British Empire a verv decided opinion has been formed that greyhound racing is not a thing to be encouraged. Among our own people at home it is obvious that there is a movement of thought and feeling in the same direction.” —“Sunday Tinies.” The Teacher’s Boundaries.

“There was a time when there was no freedom for teaching; you had to teach along official lines. Now yon have this academic freedom—not, perhaps, quite. T think that there may be some subjects which are still beyond the pale; but that will not last much longer. Truth will make its way, is making its way, and it rests with you younger men and women to see that it has a fair chance. Keep your minds open, avoid credulity, avoid undue negative assurance, be guided by the facts, make sure of the facts, do not exclude facts on the ground of any preconceived opinion, and then there will be a splendid prospect. I believe that there is a splendid prospect dawning before humanity, and that some of you will help it on and live to see it long alter we elders have gone.”—Sir Oliver Lodge.

Disarmament by Example. "Disarmament bv example breaks the vicious circle, disposes of the fatal ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’ and implies a trust in other nations which will be justified because of the effect on the nations of the world which a government speaking with this voice is bound to have. Disarmament by example cuts away at one stroke the steps and stages which are at present leading the nations into a blind alley. Disarmament by example removes the dilemma with which a Government bent on the establishment of peace is confronted when by every other hitherto proposed scheme it is obliged to keep armaments in being, improve them so that they may not be out of date, and listen to experts as to their adequacy. ' —Mr. Arthur Ponsonby. M.P., in the "Contemporary Review.”

Opinions in Print. “I believe myself that for the weekly review of opinion a big future, a very big future, is opening out. I believe that the weekly review is the comiug paper—and that in the future more aud more the opinion-paper will tend to become separated from the news-paper. On the one hand, the daily newspaper will continue to give us our news ser- ' ice better and better as time goes on, and there are more and more facilities for ' acquiring the latest accurate information on all subjects, and the public demands a higher and higher standard of accuracy and lack of bias in its news. But the opinion-paper will not be the daily paper, for the truth is that few’ people want opinions every day. They haven’t time for them—once a week is enough to get reasonably informed opinion and to shake down the news of the week into its proper proportions in one’s own mind. The opinion-paper will be the weekly review.”—‘‘The Viscuntess Rhondda, in “Time and Tide.” The Examination Incubus. “A movement is on foot towards a leaving examination for central schools, and the Association of Education Committees of England and Wales, justover a year ago, pronounced in favour of a policy by which even' local education authority should hold an examination annually for pupils of a definite age in all the elementary schools of its area. This policy, happily. has not been carried out, for cogent reasons. Elementary school teachers strongly resent this new enthusiasm, on the grounds that such an ill-considered attempt at standardisation would be a delusion. Would it be fair or educational to apply the same tests to a school in a slum area and a school in a residential suburban area, and then to compare the results?”—A correspondent in the '‘Birmingham Post.” Drugs.

Faith is-a great curative agency, and no one can doubt the popular confidence in a . prescription. The blacker and more bitter the mixture, the (

deeper is the belief in it. Indeed, there is a fine gradation of faith from blackness and bitterness through brownness and redness to colourlessness and sweetness. It may be hinted accordingly that panel doctors who are lavish in their distribution of bottles may, nevertheless, be quite up to date in their treatment, and are perhaps not at all deserving of being labelled oldfashioned and being subjected to some of the criticisms which have been directed against them. They may, as a matter of fact, be more modern than their critics, in so far as they are utilisiug a method which recognises the value of confidence in the treatment as a force towards recovery. The point emerges that it seems to be undesirable to limit too narrowly a doctor in his method of dealing with his panel patients. Everv doctor has his own ideas, and everv patient is a separate problem. This, at any rate, is how it strikes a layman.—The “Glasgow Herald.” Parliament and the Church.

“If the Church would be free to define its doctrine and order its government, that can be gained at the price other churches have paid. A State Church can never be truly autonomous,” says the "Observer” (London). “The surging conviction of the House of Commons may prove, in the long run, to have broken the ties between Church and State. In that event it will .also have broken the unity .of the Church itself.’ Only the historical sense and the organised fabric hold together those who walk with Sir William Joynson-HicKS and that other half of the ’Anglican communion which is ‘Protestant with a difference.’ Abrogate the Settlement —leave the Church to the free play of ‘self-determination’ —and disruption will follow as the night the day.” The People are Waiting.

“1 miss in the Deposited Prayer Book any real satisfaction for the needs of the present time, any satisfaction for the needs of the great mass of intelligent people. . . . Science has been advancing by giant strides in our days The veil which hangs between the known and the unknown, which science every dav endeavours to pierce is tending here and there to become very thin. Science itself, in the examination of the constitution of matter, has led manv wise and learned men, in consequence of their own researches, to realise that there must lie behind all material things a something about which it is difficult to grasp and as yet impossible to define. Such a feeling is widespread amongst thoughtful people to-day. We arc waiting for someone who wifi not overthrow the old revelation, who will not disestablish the old faith, but who will carrv us into a wider field and will give’us a new vision of the world that is beyond.”—Sir Marini Conway, M.P. According to Dickens,

Charles Dickens one presided at a meeting of the Mechanics’ Institute at Leeds, and was introduced to George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive. In the "Yorkshire Evening News” Air. T. I’. Cooper quotes the speech the novelist made on that occasion. Dickens said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be not power, and a very dreadful power. Look where we. will, do we not find it powerful for everv kind of wrong and evil? Powerful to take its enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down; powerful tn fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the craves; powerful for blind violence, prejudice, and error, in all their gloomy and destructive shapes. Whereas the' power of knowledge, if I understand it, is to bear and forbear ; to learn the path of duty and to tread it ; to engender that self-respect winch does not stop at self, but cherishes the best respect for the best objects—to turn an enlarging acquaintance with the jovs and sorrows, capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily account in mildness of life and gentleness of construction, and humble efforts of the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric.”