THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 19, 17 October 1942, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments—Reflections Intercession. God, our Father, give to the nations of tlie world a new heart of comradeship, that every people may bring its tribute of excellence to the common treasury, without fear, and without the lust of domination; and all the world may go forward in the new and living way which He has consecrated for us; who now liveth and reigneth, with Thee and the Spirit of truth, one God, world without end. Amen.

Patience conquers the world.— Proverb.

“Blood is a particular type of fluid; tears are also, —'born of suffering, they return to the human soul to fall as a fertile and creative seed, to awaken in the minds of future generations the ability to perforin new deeds, an imitative instinct of heroism, skill and courage to bear suffering, provided that the great idea which induced them to bear fruit, still lives.”—From an editorial in a Polish “Underground” paper “Rzeczpospolita” (The Commonwealth.) Warsaw, May 7, 1942.

“Don’t suppose, even for a moment, that we have forgotten wha,t you are suffering at the hands of your barbarian invaders. It is well known to us that the hated Hitlerite hangmen lord over your country, that they oppress you with unprecedented, cruelty, plunder your towns, and pillage your villages; that in concentration camps or forced labour camps in Germany they torture a tremendous number of your relatives and friends; that this gang of murderers perpetrates these crimes in order to obtain, by compulsion, your subservience. But we know also that the Polish soul is alive and nothing will destroy the spirit of tlie Polish people. We pay tribute to your courage, loyalty, and spirit of resistance. Furthermore, we give our pledge that your independence and freedom for which you took up arms, will be given back to you. We were faithful to you on September 3, 1939; we shall also be faithful in victory and the pence which will follow.” —Mr. Arthur Greenwood, M.P., iu a special broadcast to Poland a few weeks ago.

“The war compels us to hold fast the slender ties which bind us to order and decency and sanity itself; to face the insecurity of our homes which are being defended for us witli such courage: the insecurity of our traditions which are being assailed by children who have fled helplessly from the wrath of their unseen enemy; the insecurity of our convictions which are being fiercely attacked by intellectual analysis and experience. The nationalist thinks of his tribe and the communist of his class, while we see freedom itself in peril—freedom to call our souls our own, freedom to thinß and talk openly about nationalism, communism, and other isms. It is easier to destroy than to build, and today what we have built has to be defended. War is more inevitable than civilization, for you can drift into war or collapse into it, but civilization must be consciously willed: all the knowledge, and all the skill, all the rules of navigation, all the paths of the sea must be mastered by each generation if the ship of state is to keep an even keel and escape disaster.” —From "Leeks and Daffodils,” by Thomas Jones, C.H.

“I would ask your Lordships to remember,” said Lord Perth in tlie House of Lords, “that the League which failed was not the League envisaged by President Wilson, by General Smuts, and by other statesmen. That League was based on the intimate participation iu .its inner councils of the United States of America. That League has never been tried, and lias never failed. I want to emphasize tlie point because, some little time ago, in one of those brilliant performances of the Brains Trust,' the earlier performances, I heard Professor Joad tell his vast audience: “We have tried the League, it has failed; we must try something else unless civilization is to perish.’ I think a statement of that kind might well mislead the millions of listeners unless it was accompanied by some such qualification as I have suggested. The League without America failed. I am profoundly convinced that had the League as originally conceived come into being it would have fulfilled all the hopes and all the aspirations of its founders, and the present calamities would have been averted.”—Lord Perth was, as Sir Eric Drummond, formerly Secretary to the League of Nations.

“Food habits of a lifetime aro sometimes hard to change. Whether they are based bn long-established custom or deep-rooted fallacies, or both, they are not readily given up by adults. No better illustration could be given than the reluctance of the mass of the people to purchase wlieatmeal bread when there was a choice between that and the ordinary white loaf. Ott the one hand we were urged to force wheatmeal bread down the throats of tlie people and were assured that they would like it when they came to understand that is was good for them. At the other extreme we were emphatically told that the public actively disliked a dark loaf. My own impression, from a close study of the matter, is that tlie majority of people are ‘conditioned,’ to use a ranch over-worked word, to white bread and give little thought to any other variety. They are certainly apathetic to appeals based on food values. Most people go into a shop ask for a loaf of bread, get a white one, as lias always been the case unlessbrown were specifically asked for, and give no more thought to the matter. But although we must admit it large measure of resistance in adults lo new ideas about food I by no means shave the view that it. is always a matter of tlie greatest difficulty to change their food liabits.”—Professor J. C. Drummond, D.Sc., in an address delivered to tlie Royal. Society of Arts. lie * ♦ ■ The Shadow. I can find no pleasure in the beauty of tlie sea, Though a million rainbows ride in on the foam, Mingled with the east wind there come to torture me The cries of all the little ships never coining home. Blanche Gile.