THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 30, 30 October 1942, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections Conscience is the voice of the soul: e the passions are the voice of the body. —Rousseau. * * * Beneath the East River Drive of the City of New York lie stones, bricks, and rubble from the bombed City of Bristol, in England. Taken there in ballast from overseas, these fragments that once were homes shall testify while men love freedom to the resolution and fortitude of the people of Britain. They saw their homes struck down without warning. ... It was not their homes but their valour that kept them free. And'broadbased under all Is planted England’s oaken-hearted mood, As rich in fortitude As e'er went worldward from the island-wall. on bronze plaque erected by English Speaking Union' of U.S.A, to mark area in which rubble from bombed. Bristol was used as fill-in during construction of East River Drive. Unveiled June 29.

“The following message, addressed by President Roosevelt to the booksellers of America, has deep significance for us on the British side of the Atlantic,”' writes Mr. Stanley Unwin, the well-known bookseller, in “The Times,” London. It is more Important that your work Should go on now than it has ever been at any other time in our history: in' a very literal sense you cany upon your bookshelves the light that guides civilization. I need not labour the contrast between the estate of books in the free democracies and the estate of books in countries brutalized by our foes. We all know that books burn—yet we have the greatef knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp for ever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s .eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, books are weapons. Have we over here fully grasped that vital truth, ‘Books are Weapons?’ ”

“Those who have the direction of agricultural effort are now facing up to the difficulties which are bound to arise over getting in the vital corn harvests,” writes E.'M.D. in the “Birmingham Post.” “A casual observer might ’bo inclined to think that the .main problem will be labour, but I do not accept that as a. correct forecast. I believe the major anxiety will be a shortage of reaper-binders—unless cafeful plans are made in advance for maximum use of all tilio machines available. Every farmer who has a binder should look on it not only aS a personal possession, but also as a national asset, a means of helping neighbours. Those who borrow have a double duty: they must keep the binder a minimum time; they must return it in good order and ready for work. Many farmers have still to learn that lubricating oil has virtues, and that the time to repair an implement is the moment it goes wrong! One of the most gratifying features of wartime has been the way in Which farmers have helped one another, and they are unlikely to fall short in this direction.”

“I am all in favour of treating no man as infallible, but to think that the Prime Minister and his military advisers woulfl not strike now if they had the means to do so is to rate them a good deal below their worth,” writes Lieut.-General Sir Douglas Brownrigg in the “Evening News,” of London. The nearest analogy which springs to my mind is the case of a man suddenly taken so seriously ill in an isolated locality that only an urgent operation can save his life. Unfortunately the doctor in attendance finds at the crucial moment that his surgical instruments have been stolen from his car. Is he therefore to operate at once on the kitchen table with kitchen knife, or is he to risk his patient dying while he sends to the house of the nearest surgeon for the necessary instruments? He is in a nasty fix. Is he to operate at once with unsuitable tools and risk a fatal ending, or is he to wait while his patient gets weaker and weaker in order to be reasonably sure of making a successful operation if the patient lives until the right tools arrive? The situation of the United Nations is much the same.”

“A Gallup poll shows that 70% of Americans feel they aro fighting against Hitler, and not against the German people. This is a false and dangerous belief, which will lead to ■the same deceptions as the last war. The German warrior people as an entity,- guided by its intelligentsia, first followed the Kaiser, and now follows a proletarian in its desire to conquer the world. Hitler is Germany. We can effectively protect ourselves against the war passion of the German people only by taking out of their hands for a certain time three things left to them in the Versailles Treaty—arms, education, and government. With peace every weapon inside the German frontiers, every gun in the hands of a soldier or a policeman, should bo carried by a non-German. Education must fall into the hands of non-Ger-mans who can speak German. Religion, history, plillisophy, all teach principles foreign to the German character, and can only be infused gradually—tolerance toward other races, and acknowledgment that the spirit is superior to force. As no one knows when the Germans will be ripe for self-government, the first years after a peace a protective government like the one the English for forty years exercised in Egypt should reign in Germany. What I propose is not a punishment, but a temporary declaration of political immaturity.”— Emil Ludwig, eminent German writer now in exile, speaking at Los Angeles. * * % Trees. Juat half-a-score of years ago These trees were planted, row on row, By one defiant who knew that he Himself would never live to see His orchard bear. Today they stand No less defiant than the hand Which toiled so long and lovingly To beet prepare' each seedling tree For future yields. The waiting ground Received its gifts; in each fresh mound Of earth, a tree; Donation to posterity. —Faye Chilcote Walker.