VOICE OF ThE WORLD

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 18

VOICE OF ThE WORLD

"lt has to be remembered," says the; .■■ ' "Manchester Guardian," Nazi "that the Nazi dictaDictatorship, torship, and the men behind it, .are regarded with much greater fear among Germany's neighbours than, any of their predecessors. Against Hitler's pacific speech arc a hundred other acts and utterances which breed this fear in those who are asked to contemplate' actual German equality and the use that may be made of it in five years' time. The search for 'security will, therefore, become ' still more acute. Greater stress will be laid on the necessity of a strict and far-reaching scheme of international supervision of armaments. But there is another thing to be done in respect- or' which our own Government can perform an immense service.' It is essential that in'the future, when any of the treaties is en-j | dangercd, the whole force of tlie League lof Nations should bo brought into play ' (as it was not in the ease of Japan) to i restrain the wrongdoer. The only alter- '

native will bo war by individual Powers._ The British Government could do no better service than to fortify the League at every turn. and. by every means against the. time when European peace' may be endangered in either tho near or the distant future." . # # * "A man who keeps his silver plate at the bank does not really Health possess it—nobody posHoarding. sesses it, seeing that ' : nobody is any the better for its existence," writes the medical correspondent of "The Times" Trade and Engineering Supplement. "To make use of silver plate, on the contrary, may be expected to afford some satisfaction. The rule applies to health as well as to wealth. The old prejudice dies hard and the fear of overstrain lingers in multitudes of minds. The/world is full of people who would be fit if only they ceased to try to hoard their fitness. Uppermost in the minds of all these people is tho question: 'Shall I overtax myself if I do this or that?' As if a man possessed his strength like shillings in a bag so that when the last shilling was spent he would inevitably collapse. The truth about fitness is that it exists only when it is used and that when it is used it increases. The best way to develop muscles is not to put them in slings but to do work with them. A muscle in a sling soon atrophies and vanishes away, But a muscle kept steadily at work may double its size. The war cured millions of hyprochondriac people by giving them work. They found that they possessed a great deal of health. The silver plate, so to speak, was taken out of the bank and put on tho table. These people could scarcely contain themselves for joy. The cure remains, in time of peace, for those who care to use it. When a man begins to think about his health he is losing his health. His health is going into a bank or a stocking. If he does not take care ho may never see it again. ... A crisis is met by increased activity of mind and body. Stagnant faculties are brought into use once more and the riches of health are enjoyed instead of being saved for f.he day which will never dawn." # # * "Whilo people in this country are j watching with dismay Trust in the disappearance of yet Humour. another European democracy and the emergence of a particularly odious form of neo-Prussianism, it is perhaps not altogether idle to ask the question whether Fascism has any future in England,'' snys the "Economist." "We must take i-arc nut to allow the defects and abuses to which our-existing Parliamentary machine is subject to bring, discredit on the idc.'tl of di'inocnitk' go"-'----rnniient in th^ minds of the politically uneducated. In tho meantime, wo shall probably not be wrong in trusting to the national sense of humour as a. potent safeguard against such possibilities in the near future. In out- present temper it would be safe to assume that a couple of cartoons by Low —our presont-day Aristophanes—would bring down any would-be dictator to a more civil level as cheaply and as effectively as any machine-gun. The destructive power of laughter may often be considerably greater than that of amatol or trinitrotoluene. But it is as well to remember that in Athens Aristophanes was ' finally suppressed, and that even in this country our Parliamentary liberties may yet require to be safeguarded by much more energetic vigilance than is displayed by most of os i<y&ayj~

"We, living in this modern world, are witnessing immense Technical changes, not merely iv Education, the methods of produc- , ing the goods we need for use and sale, but in the goods themselves," says Mr. Albert Abbott m discussing the necessity for enlarging the scope of technical education in Great Britain. "Ought the workman of the future to be trained as a specialist, knowing a somewhat narrow range of raw materials and their working properties thoroughly, and possessing the manual skill needed for shaping the materials into finished goods? Or should he be trained on broader lines, in order" that he may be 'self-reliant, resourceful, and, above all, adaptable and prepared to meet with confidence whatever new conditions may arisef My own view is that while tho proportion of the specialist workers will diminish, they will not disappear, and accordingly ■we must . have definite methods' for training them. These ' methods are mostly effectively pro-

vided by pro-employment full-time schools, such as the London trade schools. I think, however, that it is certain that the proportion of 'handymen' needed by industry will increase considerably and that a new meaning will be given to the term 'skilled workman.' In Great Britain wo have always attached more importance to the possession of personal qualities, than we have to that of knowledge or skill, and I hope that we shall continue to do so. The problem we have before us is to maintain and even to develop the personal qualities I have mentioned, and, at the same time, to increase knowledge and widen skill." » *. , • * "Have we half-forgotten those terrible four years" asked Those Terrible Dean Inge in' his serYears. mbn at the annual service for limbless ex-servicemen in St. Paul's Cathedral. "Thinking of the crowds that yearly gathered on Armistice Day, one was inclined to say, 'Moat certainly not.' Yet, ■on the other days of the year did we think enough about it? Did we think that most of the middle-aged men we met had been through the terrible experiences ' they hardly ever talked about? Where is the once familiar figure of the boastful old soldier who loved to right his battles ovei again?" asked the dean. "We never meet him now. I suppose the realities of those terrible years were really too bad to talk about. One wonders what they are thinking about at all. Many of them, no doubt, feel that the older generation blundered badly to make such a disaster possible." They saw around them just the things which it was hoped would not be seen after the war —luxury waste, idleness, frivolity, and class conflicts. AVas this the England which many of their comrades died to preserve? And then the young people, who did not remember the war, did they realise that it was for them to see to it that nothing of the kind happened again? He feared that the silence of the old soldiers of the Great War had been carried a little too far, and that a generation had grown up who were not warned of the awful possibilities of another war, which would probably wreck civilisation altogether. * * « In a recent broadcast message, Mr. Ramsay MncDonald Strength of said:—We have'bred in Empire. our very bones tho conviction that tho sense of liberty and responsibility in the citizen is the foundation-stone of the State. Tho real defence of the State is the character and spirit of its people, and for tho development of this, discipline is not enough. . Freedom is essential. Freedom used by an enlightened people yields the highest discipline. We have showii the whole world how a f.rce dcmocrncy has withstood intact the strains and stresses of this generation, Wo have had our crises—crises of war, and crisos of economic catastrophe—but in none of them, neither here nor in any of our. self-governing Dominions, has the regime collapsed, the constitutional system proved inadequate, or the people been found incapable, , within the framework of their constitution and without surrender of their liberties, of meeting and dealing with their difficulties. We must strive that that will remain so. We must be in the truest sense conservative of all that is best in our heritage, but at the same time remember that'the heritage has not been given to us as . a treasure to be buried in a napkin, but one to be enriched by «ur own efforts in using it for good,-*?