PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 June 1927, Page 4

PUBLIC OPINION.

BRITISH I A Lit )UH AND CHINA. Mr Ramsay .MacDonald has known from the In-ginning Dial it was the unanimous view of responsible advisers on the spot iliai Shanghai could not I K . ..vsn-unted io the face of local conditions. mid that the presence of troop dilions, and Hint the presence of troops was necessary. . , i i l.: al

I certainly understood his first speech in the House of Commons, though couched in very equivocal language. to mean that while the responxibiity rested with the Government he appreciated that view. Vet the Labour Party has since, in the House of Commons. sought to iensure the sending of troops, has called for their diversion when on the way, and Mr MacDonald has voted with his extremists in lavoiir of this ix,te ol censure. Ainonc who Studies the accounts of what, has been happening in Nanking, where British troops were not available, and thinks of what might have happened in .Shanghai, where the British troops

arrived just in time, can form his judgment of what would ho the responsibility on the shoulders of the Labour Government, if they were now in office

and had acted with the indecision and inconsistency which they exhibit in opposition.’’—Sir John Simon, M.P, THE OLD ADAM. • In most human beings—or at any rate* in most men —the old agraiinn instinct, however carefully wo may suppress it, is never altogether dead. For man is essentially a land-animal. Everyone ol us. it has been said, though the saying is no doubt exaggerated. is a farmer at heart. And in these days of telephones and motor buses and wireless insulations, when town and country have been brought so much nearer together, and the running of a farm, whether large or small, is no longer an isolated affair as it once used to lie, the number of those who. having made or inherited a bit ol money, would like nothing better than to put it into a place in the country, where they would grow their own fruit an ,l vegetables, and feed their own poultry and pigs, and perhaps even lice]) a cow or two and make butter, must be very considerable.” —Mr Philip Morrell, formerly M.P. for South Oxfordshire, in the “Sunday Times.”

RISING TO TH E OCCASION

• ft is an immense satisfaction to me to see the good-will and the general confidence with which recent amalgamations in British industry have been received by tbe public. It shows tbe good sense of our people and their faith in the spirit in which the creditors of these amalgamations are working and in the objects they are pursuing. ido not detect the least tendency on tho part of the average man and women to ho 1 Tightened by tiie mere size and scope of the new developments or to impute- sinister and selfish motives to those who are responsible for them.”—Sir Allred Monel, M.R., in the “Illustrated Sunday Herald.”

THE BOOKS WE READ. “There are good l ooks which should he read bv one generation alter another; and there are good hooks which have no permanent value, for the permanence of a hook is by no means its sale claim to merit. A scholar who publishes a thesis may have all his conclusions upset bv the discovery ol now evidence. An economic expert who nuhlishcs a pamphlet on a particular industrial controversy may find his pamphlet rendered valueless by the settlement of the dispute. But neither the scholar nor the economic expert wrote in order to have their works read after a century of time. They wrote to prowards some greater good; yet without them the march of the human mind would he retarded. And even the small-wares of literature have their value. The essays and poems that delight for a time and are then forgotten are not always to be despised. The light novel is a relaxation and an amenity.”—“Yorkshire Post.”

THE FASCINATION OF THE AIR. “I ant convinced that flying is less dangerous than motoring, provided that the pilot is.level-headed and takes no unnecessary risks, that the inspection of . machines is good, and thorough communications by telephones me kept up. The man who 'stunts’ low is a fool. There is no more difficulty in stunting low than in stunting mgn, hut there is considerable difference 1n the safety of the proceedings At a thousand feet, if anything goes wrong with Tour engine while you are in the middle of a manoeuvre you have plenty of time and space to get your machine under control in a proper

glide. But if anything happens when you are low you will certainly crash. . . There is something in the air which affects aviators like ail extra

glass of champagne. I have spoken to doctors about it, and the only conclusion that I can come to is that in going swiftly through tho air one absorbs more oxygen than one does in moving slowly about, and the effect makes people reckless and uncalculating.”—Admiral Mark Kci'r.

DR EOS DICK ON CONFESSION. “We modern Protestants fail in some tilings. Our Roman Catholic brethren in keeping the confessional have pretty nearly wiped Us off the stage in one feature of human service. Through the confessional they have built up an amazing service for the treatment of sick souls. A good priest, through the confessional, can develop a treatment for the individual and wo have nothing to compare with it. For six veal's I have conducted —Baptist though I am—what I call a confessional. 1 am not

afraid to recover tilings the Protestants threw away—beauty of service and the confessional. 1 have an office whore people who know they are spiritually sick and mentally disturbed ran come with their problems. Mhy shouldn't I minister to them? Never again wiii I lie without such a pirn-? where people can meet me alone. - l)r Eosdiek. the famous Baptist in a recent address reported in the “Christian