THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 263, 5 August 1942, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections

"I believe in history all epilogues are prologues and all prologues epilogues." —Sir Stafford Cripps.

There is an authentic story of a Swiss who, in the early part of 1918, protested to a German against the devastation in occupied countries. "After this,” he asked, “what will you do if you lose the war?” The prompt reply was, “We will organize sympathy.” This they did, and so successfully that they escaped punishment and left the Allies to bear the cost of the war.— "Sydney Morning Herald." Yes; England has changed; one of the guests sjxdie to me at dinner tonight! She’s a resident of Portsmouth, but sees no sense in taking the risk of staying there. With genuine cheerfulness she announced she’d lost all. her Worldly goods—ironically enough they’d been-taken from her bouse and stored for safety in a "fireproof” warehouse. An incendiary bomb utterly destroyed the warehouse; the empty residence is untouched! She will, she says, get compensation from the Government some day after the war—perhaps aS much as one-fifth of its value!—Mallory Browne, in “Christian Science ’Monitor.” —

“Conquest for conquest’s sake is the ideal of the savage. Before conquest or empire can be justified, the end for ■which wars are fought and empires are won must be established in the court of moral pleas. In ultimate analysis what dream can well be mote vulgar and barbarous than the conquest of the world by the sword? Apart, from the bloodshed, misery, and desolation immediately involved in the process, what good or valuable result can be obtained from the general abasement of selfrespect or the violent destruction of national individuality?”—Written by the late Hl A. L. Fisher in 1912.

Renewed disclosures about Hitler’s enterprise in -making himself sole master and proprietor of a tremendous German publishing concern, with a turnover of £70,000,000 a year and profits (which are all Hitler’s) of between £7,000,000 and £10,000,000 sterling per annum, perhaps throw some light on what the Fuhrer meant by his references, in his last new year speech, to Churchill and Roosevelt as “sluggards” who were not to be compared to “a man like me.” Obviously, neither the British Prime Minister nor the American President ever engineered such a magnificent personal ramp as Hitler's publishing racket, largely achieved by suppressing or confiscating the businesses of his competitors. To that extent they are poor but honest sluggards, not to be compared to the slippery genius with a talent for fraudulent conversion, who has ruined Germany while enriching himself. And this is the gilt-edged adventurer whose favourite word of abuse for others is "pluto-democrat” ! —"Lucio” in “Manchester Guardian.”

Civilization is not wealth, power, luxury, self-esteem, not social eminence, not flourishing art, not the culture of the salon, not the tread of the mighty armies, not the wash of turbined fleets, not the accomplishment of industry. Civilization is not a veneer. It radiates from the heart through flesh that feels all flesh its own. Its fruits are active solicitude for the distressed, the poor, the weak ones of society; chivalrous devotion to woman, reverence of motherhood, love of children, sympathy with youth, indulgence, for the old, abhorrence of special privilege, intolerance of all things narrow, secret, unfair, unclean; hunger for the truth, thirst for justice, zeal for commonwealth, passion for true liberty, inspired by democratic consciousness of inalienable rights, but bound by an equally imperious reminder of obligations and duties, loathing licence, hating religious bigotry, scorning racial prejudice. Civilization means readiness to sacrifice self for the unborn, even- as the millions who have died on the Western Front have sacrificed themselves.—A. W. McCann, an American writer. Written after the First World War.

From a visit to London in the summer of 1937 this writer recalls a small episode in Trafalgar Square more vividly than many scenes rated as more important. Its significence has increased with the portentous historic events through which that city has passed in tlie intervening five years. Beside the pedestal supporting one of the colossal recumbent lions in bronze, by Landseer, which guard the base of the Nelson Monument column, a man accompanying a little girl was stooping over her, evidently trying to hear some insistent request that she was making. She kept pointing upward toward the lion whose form was high above her reach.. When tlie man understood the child’s wish, he lifted her above him till she was able to lay one of her hands against the lion’s nearer forepaw and gently pat it. That was all she had wanted ; and even from the considerable distance at which the observer was standing he could sense tlie child’s complete happiness conveyed by the caressing .small fingers. Somehow the love of a whole people toward their nation, and faith tn an invisible protecting power symbolized in degree by its monumental lions, were expressed in so winsome a gesture. Indeed, the inoinontnrj’ glimpse of the child's rose-petal hand relieved so delicately against the dark bronze of the giant guardian's paw has been fixed tlie more indelibly in remembrance by contrast to events of the terrible ensuing wartime . And always the recollection is accompanied by hope thsit the Divine Hand above the child’s own, in the fearfully assaulted but never-surrendering city, shielded from hurt during the anguish such grace and innocent appeal.—Letter in “New York Times.” « * * Yet, Freedom. And now all's horror—bullet, axe and rope— Those posthumous implacable eyes accuse The generations that betrayed their hope, The greed and blindness that betrayed their truce, The peace that perished ere its roots could grope. Lo, one more feverish tragic Autumn dying In a great blaze like some forgotten king ‘ Whose warriors range about his body crying, Though to their heavy hearts the trumpets ring: "Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying! . . .”