PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 August 1926, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

RADIO. “ While it is true that the growth of the radio industry is one of the marvels of the age, it is by no means equally true that all the sets put into operation continue to be used. It seems to be a common experience for tlio family with a radio to use it incessantly the first few months, then with diminishing frequently, and at last almost never except when some particularly interested occasion is being ‘put on the air’. At present the radio is almost exclusively a musical instrument. AA lnle it provides an astonishing amount of serious music by good orchestras and soloists, it offers an even more astonishing quantity of jazz. The vast potentialities in the field of information, news transmission, and non-musical entertainment are still almost untouched. The position held by the station director ought to he one comparable to that of newspaper editor.’’—The “New Republic” (U.S.A.). ON EATING. “Nearly every friend I have is notorious for eating too little. One mail is afraid of soup. Another leaves tlie salmon untasted. A third regards potatoes as a poison. A fourth lias been warned against tomatoes. Others dare not eat sweets for fear of growing fat, as though it were not a fine thing to be fat. I do not know of a single food or drink of which somebody or other is not frightened. Even bread which used to lie called the staff of life, is avoided by many as though it were steeped in rat poison, and I know a man who imputes all the worst epidemics that have devastated the human race to the disastrous lmbit of drinking water. This seems to me to he a very undesirable state of affairs. Courage at tlie table is ns necessary, if not as noble, a virtue, as courage in battle.”—Mr Robert Lynd. in the “Daily News.” THE VANISHING DOMESTIC. “The servant class will continue to diminish for many reasons, and the members of the employer class will have to learn to wait upon themselves more and more every day. Even in London they will gradually retire to flats, with communal heating arrangements, adopting the habit of going out for all their meals to restaurants; for by degrees domestic servants will refuse to work after a certain hour in the afternoon."—The Earl of Arran in the “National Review.”

“THE CREED OF A TORY.” “AVe can work for the preservation and improvement of open spaces, for town-planning on a fine and generous scale, for the utilisation of fine sites in our towns for noble purposes. AVe can take care and trouble to see that tlie plans of new public buildings are fine and worthy, neither spoiled by petty cheese-paring economy nor over-orna-mented and undignified. If only we could inspire in all Conservatives oil public bodies a vision of what the future of this country should he. if we could create in them hut a fraction of the civic zeal which urged on the great Athenians and the nobler Roman Caesars, and the citizens of the Middle Ages, in a few years wo should bring greatly increased health and plea-

sure and beauty into the lives of our fellow citizens.”-—Pierse Loftus, in “The Creed of a Tory.” THE UNSOPHISTICATED. “ It is the fashion in the more superior literary journals of our time to sneer at the Unsophisticated, for almost nothing is done for their reading by these journals. Because they are moved by Longfellow as well as by Tennyson, by Airs Humphrey AAard equally with Jane Austen, by the latest successful novel of tlie day and by Mr Do La Marc’s fairy-stories at one and the same time, therefore little articles are written making tun of them, sarcastic poems are composed in their honour by very clever young poets, and the true love of literature is said to be quite beyond their experience. But is it? Because the Unsopisticated have never considered whether their reading Is good form or no is merely ail argument in favour of their honesty; the Unsopisticated indeed have no opportunity of being anything but honest.”—Hugh Walpole.