THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 35, 5 November 1942, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments—Reflections

But not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.—American saying. * * * ■

“We are all familiar with the saying which reminds us that there are times when we have ‘to be cruel to be kind.’ And we know how that truth has to be applied in the realm of training chilren or in dealing with someone who is ill. The conditions may be such that the best interest of the child or the patient is served by causing temporary pain. It is a difficult task for the parent or the doctor, a task from which he shrinks and which he tries to avoid to the uttermost. But if he has the real interest of the other at heart he just has to do it.”—The Rev. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Associate Minister at Westminster Chapel, author of “The Flight of Man and the Power of God.”

"Proaganda is, of course, a difficult thing. I am never quite happy about it. I do not really understand it. I have spent a great part of tny life in trying to sell books, and I have found very often that the best salesmanship was by getting high quality and not bothering too much about what may be called ‘sales pressure.’ If the stuff is good, you will sell it. If our policy is put forward honestly, and the policy is honest and sound, we shall gradually ge it understood. I am distrustful of propaganda, and I think it has to be carefully handled or you may do more harm than good.”—Mr, Harold MacMillan, M.P.. for Under Secretary of State for the Colonies.

“As for the outcome of the war, I think we may accept Lord Bryce’s opinion. ‘No one who studies the career of Napoleon can believe it possible for any State, however great her energy and material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of Ancient Rome, to gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more and more marked in each successive age. This is even more true in 1942 than in 1566. Ther may be and probably will be a terrible period of revolutions and civil wars in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the end of which none can forsee, but the' United States of Europe can be established only by consent, not by a knock-out blow administered by the strongest of them. And what of Germany? Hitler, like Napoleon, illustrates the progression so often noted by the Greeks, of insolence, success,' infatuation. ‘People will want to know,’ said Napoleon, ‘where we are going. We-are going to make an end of Europe, and then to throw ourselves upon other robbers more daring than ourselves, and to become mistress of India.’ The lure of Alexander the Great still draws on those whom Coleridge calls ‘the masters of mischief, the libertieides and mighty hunters of the world.” —Very Rev. W. R. Inge, D.D., in the "Church of England Newspaper.”

“No well-grounded democrat,” says the “Sunday Times,” London, "feels that the rulers of Germany are in a stronger position because Hitler abolished debate in the Reichstag, made the newspapers his tools and all criticism of himself and his minions criminal. This permits of short cuts to decision and speeds action, but it is not so that Governments are endowed with the most enduring strength. Hitler rides roughshod over the German people and can be sure of their support only so long as he wins battles; what they think he cannot know, for they dare say nothing that displeases him. In Britain liberty lives even in war-time. We will not surrender it. We do not blame our democratic system because things go wrong; the fault is not in our liberties but in ourselves. Parliament has not forgotten that it would have been untrue to itself if it had. Again and again its criticism has been effective in right ways. We may, indeed, fairly claim that things would have gone better if the lessons of the debates had been learned more quickly. This should encourage both Lords and Commons to persevere in well doing. It IS a commonplace to say that the present state of our affairs does not justify complaisance. Indeed, it does not. It calls for increasing vigilance and, on right occasions, for fearless criticism. The honest, disinterested critic is the Governments best friend.”

“Many people feared, not without reason, that the exigencies of total war would reduce the House of Commons to relative Impotence, or even to a status something like that of a rubber stamp Reichstag. That has not happened. It is true that in war-time the powers of the Government, the executive arm of the community, are bound to be greatly increased. And the Government has in fact been entrusted by Parliament with powers of arbitary action over a very wide sphere. But these powers have not been abused. There are ocassions when the criticism launched by Members at the Government seems hasty, ill-judged or even petulant. Nevertheless it is a good and necessary thing that public questionings should find voice at Westminster and be publicly answered by Ministers. It is a good thing, first, because even the best of democratic Governments needs the stimulus of responsible and wellinformed criticism to make it aware of actual and potential mistakes and to spur it on to correct them. It is a good thing, again, because the war effort of a free country gains immensely if the people, instead of being kept at a distance and required to obey orders without asking why, are treated by the Government as partners in a great national enterprise and invited to ‘make some conscience’ of what they ( ] O .” —“Yorkshire Post.” ♦ * • “First Solo in a Whitley.” “Tighten the throttle-nut, turn into wind, Uncage your gyro and ojien up wide, Forward you lurch, and your ears are dinned As the great twin Tigers leap into stride. Crescendo’s reached and she's doing sixty-three: Too near already the boundary feels— Pull back hard—look out for that tree— Lift your port wing—yes. and up with your wheels! So yon take off with your hair on end, Lumbering heavily up to the sky ;... ” Flying Officer Eades in Ills book of poonis, “Thy Muse hath Wings.”