PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 August 1925, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

HOI AN VALUES. “The fortunes made by the Merchant Prince, the Financier, the great Doctor even by the Kinema Star, are the measure of the value put upon their services by the eomnumitly. If it often lias a wrong standard of values, that is to snme extent the fault of the Church and no doubt in a wholly converted society a different scale of awards would obtain. But the point is that every legitimate activity ought to be regarded as service and to be carried out in that spirit. If the clergy would team mir voting men that in ‘going into the city’ they are undertaking one of the multitudinous services to their fellowmen by which our civilisation lives, and that the Church, as it used to bless the nets of the fisher folk and the fields of the farmer, has a blessing to-day for the counting-house and the Stock Exchange, less would be beatd ol woilc badly done and tasks perfunctorily performed.” —Major Kindersley, M.R.. in the “Morning Rost.”

THE LEAGUE AND THE FACT. “ft is quite true that the proposed pact only affects the West ot Europe but it affects the part of Europe which lias long been one ot ilie most difficult from the point of view of European peace. If you can once settle the secular quarrel between France and Germany. if you can once convince both the French and Germans that they are in no future danger of attack by their neighbour, you will have taken a tert large step towards securing the jteace of Europe. I don't ask you to say that that is enough. But as a support to the League, as one of the buttresses of the League, as one of the exemplars of the spirit of the League, then I snv that an agreement between France and Germany, guaranteed by us. Is an important step towards the peace of the world.”— Lord Hugh Cecil.

THE RAILWAY’S CENTENARY. “The railway has had to struggle against innumerable handicaps, greedy opposition, criminal financial speculation, intolerable legal difficulties. 1o this day some of them are burdened by the dead-weight of compensation they had to pay before they were made, and for the terrific cost of fighting their way through the opposition they had to face ill Parliament. Such. then, is something of the story of a hundred years. In spite of till the opposition and hatred with which they were hailed. railways have increased our wealth beyond calculation. Entirely an English invention, they have now spread all over the civilised glolie. They have brought the most distant points into communication: they have carried the produce of one continent to another continent; they have enriched the whole race of men: and we may expect still greater benefits from them in the future when steam at last resigns its throne to electricity. What another hundred years will bring forth who shall dare to say ?—“M.v Magazine.’’ THE WILL TO PEACE. “A very great step will have been taken towards the confirmation of peace in Europe, if. through British support, all those ghosts of war that still lmvor over the Rhine are banished by tho firm and united will of Frame and Germany to the cool and rational atmoshere of an arbitration treaty, outside, hut not opposed to the Treaty of Rcace, and watched over by a League of Nations, of which Germany herself wiTI he a member.” “The Times.’’ CLEARING THE WESTERN FRONT. “If the Pad is signed, and is honestly carried out, then the danger of Europe being once again divided into two armed camps is removed. Germain. even should she be determined to revise the peace treaties, can proceed in Hu* direction by the road, not of war, but of law She no longer remains outside the comity of nations, but on the eontrarv takes her place at a. council chamber whose main practical purpose is to maintain the territorial status quo of Europe. However, dissatisfied Germany may lie with the Treaty ot \etsailles, slu? is now admitting that it is no longer practical polities lor liei to (rv and alter it in any of its fundamental clauses. The enormous gam which such a settlement means to Europe, and particularly to its traders, cannot he denied. The mere fact that European statesmen are collaborating together will help to remove that feelinir of uncertainty which shuts markets and kills trade.”—“Morning Post.”