The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1926.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 April 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1926.

THE vSAI.T OE THE NATION. IlußtN« the testing time of the war period it was remarked again and again how the sons of Scotland served the .Empire, and the remark was to ho heard that the Scot was the salt of tho nation. Something of the same conclusion wins reached by tho Prime Minister of Great Britain who npeaking recently at London on the occasion marking the establishment of the Scottish Corporation in fho heart of the Empire. In proposing the toast of the Corporation. Mr Baldwin said: '“I should like, if I may as an Englishman, not without connection with a certain part of Scotland, to offer a few observations on the virtue of the Scot, on the impression that tho Scot has made in England, and I think, perhaps, speaking sis an Englishman, that there is one tiling above all others which we owe to you. and one thing which the Scot has set an example which wo would do well to imitate. There is nothing to my mind at least, in considering the character of the Scot, that fills me with more admiration than the way in which your people for generations have held up tiie standard of plain living • and high thinking—a lesson which to-day in a world that, if it could, would be a world of high living and plain flunking, is needed more than it ever was needed before. Nothing has made Scotland—and I am speaking as an outsider—more than that magnificent system of parochial education which she had for years before any other part of the British Isles. The picture of the Scottish student, with his sack of oatmeal, leaving his work for part of the year, living hnrd, and drawing on the frugality and the selfesaerifice of father, and mother, and brother, and sister, in the pursuit and the attainment of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, is an example to tho whole world. And what you Scots have to be mindful of is this : Thh't in this age. when education, as everything else, is served up spoonfed and like pap, you do not allow yourselves to lose sight of the ideals of the past generation, and see that your people do not, been use of desirable things placed at their doors, and far easier of attainment than they wero to their parents—that these people do not on that account neglect and despise it. And when I thinly of thostflessons which ‘ you have to give us, I am always struck by the fact that

of Scotsmen—l think perhaps alone—the English people or© nowise either jealous or envious. Whatever he the reason,, the English have always taken the Scots to their hearts as blood' bi-other.s. Ido not think it is difficult to give a reason, and I think the reason may be traced to one man of genius. For in long time after the Union itself afforded no stimulus, whatever else it may have done, to Scottish literature. One of your own most famous writers in the last century said that at that time you had “theologie ink and Jacobite blood, with gall enough in both eases to have blotted out the intellect of the country.’ But when David Hume and Adam Smith came, they were still drawing, as many Scots had done, from France, rather than from their own soil: but a few years luted, by the grace of God, you threw up two men of genius—Walter Scott and Robert Burns. You had, as no other nation ever has had, a nni of yourselves to interpret you to tlie neighbouring kingdom. That was Walter Scott. Because, however hardened an admirer of Burns you may Ik?, no one could call Burns an interpreter to an Englishman. I eahnot think of any country, which, in words that I may quote, had it's past and its present, its Highland and its Lowland, its peasants «iUI its citizens, its heroes and its mart,vi-s—the very stuff of its people and the genius of its soil-re-corded with the power aild the vitality and the humour, and the humanity with which it was recorded by Scott. But the greatest service rendered by Scott was, as 1 have said before, the interpretation of Scotland to England. 'Take myself as a typical Englishman. By the time I Was ten I hail read ‘The Tales of ii Grandfather.’ T had read all Ill's poems, 1 had rend half his novels. Since then, I suppose, no year goes by when I do not read some of them. Whenever I go to Edinburgh I go down Castle Street and look at the hay window where he •stood, and tlie door where ho welcomed Pet Marjorie. Had there been a Walter Scott tor Ireland there would have been no Boundary Commission sitting to-day, and i should have been

able to have devoted my week-ends, as I had intended, to prepare a speech worthy of this occasion. And that is not all that Walter Scott did. How impossible it would have seemed to Boswell and Dr Johnson, when they travelled in the Hebrides, if any one had told them that within sixty years there would arise a genius who would

bring the English King to Edinburgh and a put him in a kilt. That a genius had arisen, under the spell ..of whose wand the Lowland would adopt the garb of the robbers of the North. If it had not been for Walter Scott

you would not have .seen the kilt south of the Grampians, and the result of it is that wo English, a. prosaic race in many respects, Cannot look to-day «t Scotland, or at a Scot, except through those glasses tinted with romance and with history—those glasses that Walter

Scott made ns \vt*SE Aiul while we are looking at you with the visions of the Wizard of the North, .wrapt in admiration, you attend strictly to hus ; ness. Perhaps if 1 wore asked what represents the soul of Scotland. I could not answer hotter than in a reply which I have quoted before, and which was given ninny, many years ago to a relative of mine in New Zealand bv an

old Scottish farmer. And. as you know, the cream of New Zealand is the Scot. My relative asked him: •flow I nng do the tunditions that your people bring from lmme last in a new country ? And the old settler replied: ‘The porridge and the heather and

the Psalms of David last to the third

generation.’ That is tlie sustenance for body and (he sustenance for the spirit and nifiy they abide for -v.n\

“ 10wAiins the close of the war an America it business imm lit Cincinnati was iuivited by the pastor of bis church to preach a lay sermon on the theme. ‘What is. wrong with Christianity?’ He agreed to do so. and at, once tried to apply Christian ethics in his own business, writes Mi* 1 James Douglas in the ‘Daily- Express.’ ” “Ho was a clothier, employing a hundred workers. In the clothing trade there was ruthless sweating. The workers were under, paid, underfed; and overworked. '1 here were strikes. There was hatred between employer and employed. Mr Nash read the Sermon on the Mount. An impossible, impracticable, and utterly unbusinesslike document! The golden rule would ruin the clothing factory of the ‘A Nash Company.’' But Mr Nash resolved to risk ruin. Ho told llis workers that he would in future pratrise the golden rule in his factory. The golden rule worked. The turnover increased from £2fi,4(X) in 1918 to £7(30.000 in 1922. In five years the workers increased from 100 to 3,000. There were no strikes. The golden rule factory paid large wages and made larger profits. The skilled workers in the factory signed a petition asking that the less highly paid workers should share in their benefits. Moreover the workers themselves devised improvements and economies, fh order to find work for the unemployed in the district they- offered to take a lower wage and to work on alternate weeks! The-whole story seems incrediblo and inconceivable. But it is iot the invention of a canting prig. The golden rule actually and positivelyworked and was worked. It transformed the whole factory from top to bottom. It developed good fellowship and good comradeship, good .nature, end good feeling. It exorcised rancour, hatred and strife. It altered the character and ennobled the temper of till concerned, I have told the story of the golden rule factory for the benefit, of those who despairingly accept. class warfare its it. necessary and inevitable curse of civilisation. The golden antidote to class warfare is the golden rule, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.’ ”