THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 37, 7 November 1942, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments—Reflections Intercession. Eternal God, grant us courage and faith. May we do the duty that lies nearest, bearing ourselves like men. With strong confidence we commit the unknown future to Thy keeping, believing that Thou wilt vindicate the righteous and bring to naught the powers of evilthrough Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

God Almighty... has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please. —James Otis.

“This war has shown, I think, liow well our people react to adversity. Unpleasant truth, frankly told, can brace them. On the other hand, we tend to be too easily optimistic, we forget our Dunkirks and Singapores too readily, we are. prone to see .in a temporary success a harbinged of swift victory. Too many think a Second Front can be begun next Monday, and that a German collapse will there-upon occur the Monday following. Because of this tendency, more blunt truth would ‘be a service to , our cause.” — Mr, J. L. Hodson, a well known war correspondent, writing in the “Spectator.”

♦ * * “Hitherto even the most enthusiastic exponent of air power had stopped short of claiming that control of the air could do much more than clear the way for the decisive struggle on land and water. No one has suggested—or at any rate elaborated in detail —the thesis that the control of the air is not merely a necessary precondition of victory, but synonymous with victory itself. Major Seversky affirms that we are in a transitional stage, toward a position—to be reached before the end of the war—where nothing but air power will count, and where the land and sea forces will be restricted to the purely menial role of handcuffing a foe already cornered from the air. This startling vision of the near future is based on the submission that dreadnoughts of the air can be, and in the next, year or two will be. built with an effective striking radius of anything from 6000 miles upward.” —From the “Daily Telegraph,” review of “Victory Through Air Power,” by Major Alexander Seversky.

“In a somewhat materialistic and utilitarian age like this, there is a strong tendency towards vocational training, and the average people in the nation are inclined to think that children go to school in order to be trained to earn their living, and to get on in the world, and for very little more, as Emerson said: ‘Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind.’ There is a danger that by emphasizing too much the techological side we may be producing a somewhat sordid civilization in which people merely spend their lives in earning the means of living and when they grow old find they have not lived at all. There is, however, a reaction from this, and strangely enough in Russia, which is the home of Marxian materialism and which preaches the doctrine that mankind is governed by economic factors. It is there that the State spends most efforts, and energy in promoting, pure science, literature, drama and all the arts, an interesting repudiation of the fundamentals of Marxism.”

“Each member of the Commonwealth cannot stand alone by itself,’’ said Mr. Hamilton Kerr, M.P., in the House of Commons. “Look at this island of 42,000,000, about the same size as the State of New York: its basis the coal, iron and steel industries, but unless we have markets, its shipping and it? manufactures cannot survive. Look at the Dominion of Canada, with 11,500, 000 people, mainly grouped along the 49th. parallel, a fringe of industry round the Great Lakes; wheat at Winnipeg; fruit at Vancouver; the rest of the country, forest, lake and river—econmically, only an appendage of the United States. Take Australia, a great Continent, with the population of the City of London, depending upon exports of wool to Japan and this country; New Zealand, existing on agricultural exports to Britain : South Africa, a pastoral country mainly dependant on one great, export, gold. Seperately, we cannot hope to play a part, either economically or politically, in the post-war world, but, united. I believe that we can play a great part in one of the great politcal experiments of history.”

“In the view of His Majesty’s Government, the establishment of an Inter-Allied Commission to deal with international reconstruction would be altogether premature. At the moment when von Boek is hammering at the gates of the Caucasus, at the moment when Rommel and his highly mechanized army is on Egyptian soil, at the moment when Japan has spread her forces over so much of the Far East, how can the leaders of the Allied Nations be called upon to devote their thoughts to an Inter-Allied Conference even on these important questions? Wc remember how Cromwell declared of his plain russet-coated captains that ‘they knew what they were fighting for, and they loved what they knew.' That was so long ago that such a quotation no longer smacks of controversy, but at least, it is true, I think, of everybody fighting in this country today. I would put it in a phrase which I read somewhere a day or two ago that ‘the United Nations are fighting to crush brute forces, and lo secure freedom for all mankind.’ The first of these purposes is in itself a task which is far, far, from having yet been achieved. It calls for every ounce of energy in every one of us.”— The Lord Chancellor, Lord Simon, in The House of I,ords. »

« * 9 “Moment in a Libary.” “Through cloister shadows and’ a

heavy door. 1 snatch from service life a brealhing-spell, To stand amongst old rows of books once more, And snuff their musty crumbledleather smell. Silently marshal those friendly names of yore: Silent. I touch, and feel my soul rebel—■ Ashamed in uniform ami smeared with

wa r. To steal the peace their covers keep so well." —Flying Officer Eades, in bis book of poems, “Thy Muse hath Wings.”