OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 104, 26 January 1935, Page 20

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

The Problem of Sex.

“Every practising psychologist, whether his profession is that of schoolmaster, doctor or minister, knows what a great part sex plays in life,’’ writes the Rev. Leslie Weatherhead in the preface to his new book, “Psychology and Life.” Sex not understood or misunderstood; sex mishandled, partly, or even wholly, repressed; sex, to which the right adjustment has never been made, is responsible for more breakdowns than any other factor in our psychological makeup. It is sueh a powerful instinct, that, like all powerful things, when it is not wisely understood and handled it causes disaster proportionate to that power.. No one is living a harmonious life who has not come to terms with it, who is left with patches of ignorance or half knowledge concerning it, or who is trying to run. his or her life as if there were no such thing. In the past it has been so much tabu that it is the most repressed of all instincts —a fact eloquently confirmed by the violence with which some folk refer to it —and thus the most fruitful cause, in some aspect or other, of breakdown.” “Sleeping On It.”

“ ‘To go to bed and sleep on it,’ is often suggested as a means of solving a knotty problem, and probably most people have finished a day of perplexity by going to bed with the problem still unsolved, to wake in the morning to find the solution obvious. No one would dispute that fact, but it gives no grounds for stating that constructive thought has occurred during the night. There is another far more probable explanation. During the day the mind has become fatigued with work done in. thinking about the problem, and the more time spent upon it the more the fatigue, so that real work becomes progressively harder. Fatigue products are putting an increasing resistance in the path of mental work; consequently the problem merely seems to become more and more difficult. After a night’s rest these waste products are swept away and the total mental energy can be put into thought, not into dealing with unnecessary obstacles. As a rseult of this rest and the untrammelled thought of the next day, a solution is swiftly forthcoming; but it was not thought out during the night—it was the result of real thinking made possible after complete mental recuperation.”—Mr. T. L. Green, B.Sc., F.R.E.S., in “Chambers’s Journal.” The Traffic in Arms.

“In the past it has not been easy to get action taken on the international field with regard to control of armaments. We have an example of this in the fate of what is known as the 1925 Convention —the Convention for the Supervision of International Trade in Arms.. The British Government of the day worked hard to secure that Convention at Geneva; it not only signed it but ratified it. But that Convention, agreed to trine years ago, is still a dead letter. Why? .Because many of the important'countries that agreed to it have not ratified it. Here are some of the leading arms-exporting countries which signed the 1925 Convention but which have not ratified it: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy,” Japan, Germany, the United States of America. To-day the conscience of the world has been roused with regard to this question of international trade in arms, and with public opinion behind the Governments represented at Geneva, and particularly with the co-opera-tion of the United States of America, the prospect of getting an effective international Convention dealing with the matter is definitely brighter. The British Government is working for it with all its might.”—Sir John Simon. The Aerial Menace.

“We must expect that under the pressure of continuous air attack upon London at least 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 people would be driven out into the open country around the metropolis. This vast mass of human beings, numerically far larger than any armies which have been fed and mc*ed in war, without shelter and without food, without sanitation and without special provision for the maintenance of order, would confront the Government of the day with an administrative problem of the first magnitude, and would certainly absorb the energies of our small army and of our territorial force. Problems of this kind have never been faced befprq, and although there is no need to exaggerate them, neither on the other hand is there any need to shrink from facing the immense,, unprecedented difficulties which they involve. We all speak under the uncertainty of the future which has so often baffled human foresight, but I believe that if we maintain at all times in the future an air power sufficient to enable us to inflict as much damage upon the most probable assailant, upon the most likely potential aggressor, as he can in- i flict upon us, we may shield our people effectually in our own time from all those horrors.—Mr. Winston Churchhill.

A Question Answered. “Why not get back to the situation as it was under the Japanese alliance? That alliance worked very well from 1902 to 1922. It did not embroil us with the United States; indeed, there was a clause relating to arbirtation which excluded the United States from its operation. Why should we not come to some similar arrangement now, while still maintaining the most friendly relations with the United States?” asks the “Round Table.” “Attractive as this proposal seems, the more closely it is examined the less practicable does it appear. In the first place, the position and purpose of Japan have entirely changed. Then Japan was a small nation, thinking mainly of her own security as against Russia and how she was to protect herself against European intervention. Now she is a powerful State, at present in the hands of what is practically a militarist dictatorship. The Anglo-Japanese alliance provided for the integrity of China and the ‘open door.’ To-day it is the avowed policy of the present rulers of Japan to impair both. Then British and Japanese interests did not con- ' flict. Now they conflict abruptly, in ! China, in trade all over the world, and in naval matters. If there is to be an agreement with Japan, it will only be because Great Britain pays a price that makes it [worth Japan’s while.”

What Cheap Services Might Do. “The ‘shilling after seven’ telephone system is such a success it looks as if it may take up quite a number of our unemployed to keep it going A universal postage of ‘no higher price than a halfpenny,’ say, would need huge staffs to cope with it while u no higher price than twopence for telegrams would absorb most of the 150 thousand unemployed boys for delivery purposes!”—“H.W.,” in the “Penrith Observer.” Courage and Generosity.

“More than a quarter of a century ago, from an editorial office in Calcutta,” writes Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe, formerly editor of the “Statesman of Calcutta,” fli the “Schoolmaster,” "I was enabled to watch the growth of the Indian political movement, the beginnings of a mass consciousness that made the continuance of the old British system an impossibility. Since that time I have seen many opportunities for wise action offer themselves and be missed. The present opportunity I believe to be the last that the British Government can look for. Caution and safeguards? These are not words for statesmen to play with, if the British idea of constitutional freedom is to fulfil itself. The right words of to-day are courage and generosity.”

What About the Normal Child? “Speaking generally, it cannot be doubted that these two institutions, the nursery school and the open-air school, so much the products of the School Medical Service, have proved of exceptional value and significance. . . . These principles are capable of much greater extension and practice than they have hitherto received. We have devoted much labour, time and public money to the treatment of the defective child. Are we doing all that is practicable for the nutrition, physi-' cal education, nurture and health of the normal child? I fear we are not. Yet if we are failing to ensure the physical health of the normal child under fourteen years of age we must not complain or be surprised if such neglect brings with it, in later years, a harvest of preventable impairment or incapacity of body and mind.”—Sir George Newman.

General Booth’s Plans for Peace. “My mind is full of ideas and plans. Our main objective is decided. During the coming years the Salvation Army throughout the world will mobilise the whole of its forces actively and with determined purpose to promote reconciliation among all peoples.. I mean something more than passing resolutions in favour of peace. I mean a world-wide campaign in which all citizens will be urged to participate for the abatement of hatred, the removal of irritations, oblivion for ancient grudges and the substitution of mutual endeavours everywhere to promote the well-being of mankind. The clouds on the horizon would disappear if as many soldiers were enrolled in the armies of peace as are enrolled in the armies of war. The time has come for calling the reservists of religion to the colours. Let that be the next war and there will be no other.”—General Evangeline Booth. The Timor Sea.

“There are still people,” says a “Sunday Times” reviewer of Scott’s recently published book, “who fail to realise how close may be the margin between success and disaster on these recordbreaking journeys by air. Think of but one thing. The climax comes, on the route to Australia, right at the end.. The pilot, after battling for days and nights against the elements at breakneck speed for thousands' of miles, is faced in his exhaustion with that nightmare to all who have only a single engine, the desolate Timor Sea. Even when its 470 miles have been crossed there is the nerve-racking possibility of not finding Port Darwin, the one spot of civilisation in NorthWest Australia. Miss it and (as Scott says) your fate may be as bad as falling into the sea, for there is no water, no vegetation, and no life for hundreds of miles. But it is the Timor Sea that inspires the greatest alarm. ‘I hate and loathe the Timor Sea,’ says the author after his experiences of it.” The Level Crossing.

“There have been many efforts to rid the country of its five thousand level crossings; but the estimated expense has been prohibitive for all except the most fortunate districts, Now the. Minister of Transport has announced that he will give a grant of 75 per cent, towards the cost of any bridging or tunnelling scheme. Grants have been given before, but not on a scale so general and generous; and it is to be hoped that local authorities will take early advantage of the new offer. The trouble in the past has been that where crossings have been the most dangerous—in crowded areas—they have also been for the same reason the most difficult to remove. The expense is proportionately greater, and an added problem is that either a bridge or a tunnel would, in certain places, leave adjacent business premises in a siding, so to speak. But these cases are the exceptions. Normally, the remedy is simple, and the Ministry’s grant puts it within the scope of most authorities, on whom the initiative still rests.”—"Yorkshire Post.” Filming in Africa.

“We had no scenario. We had nor even a definite story. The general idea was to show the life of a British district officer in a remote part of the Empire, administering justice, building roads and bridges, teaching the natives to develop tiieir country and live peaceably together.” writes Natalie Barkas in ■ “Behind the Camera.” “The love interest was to be supplied by a nursing sister, and the inevitable third side of the triangle was to be left to the director’s discretion. These three roughtly sketched characters, then, were to bo the framework of the story. But before their fortunes could be decided there were many things to consider—questions of health, scenery, climate and transport. In a country where malaria, blackwater fever, sleeping sickness and countless other malevolent bugs and beasts conspire to demolish the white man, health was the' most important factor. Once we had started on the film the loss of one of the artists or a member of the production staff would have been disastrous. Time was almost equally important."