PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 September 1927, Page 4

PUBLIC OPINION.

FRIENDSHIP IN BOOKS. • Take an old friend with you—you ma\ come to know him better. Let the imprisoned power and splendour ol buried memories find expression in a re-reading of a hook you know. \\ urthwliile hooks give a priceless yield il we read them many times. It is all to the good to travel through a country fine knows well, picking out the vignettes of landscape, tlm (banning vistas, the lovely lakes and pools, and enjoying them deeply, ultimately. We need to travel through hooks as through new country; then later, leisurely, repeatedly.”—Mr John Moore in the “New Outlook.”

THE AERIAL ARMY M V NOE LYRES “The spaces of 'the air, with its three dimensions, are very vast ; and in the recent exercises, whilst many attacks have been defeated a,ml some have failed owing to weather condition. others have successfully penetrated the defences and delivered their bombs on London. Jt does not follow that these so-called successful raiders have actually hit their smaller objectives. HiiL the results in real war would have been all the more horrible because the sufferers would have been civilians. We need not suppose that two or three attacks, even on a. much bigger scale, would ‘wipe out’ London. But they could cause horrible disasters on a vast scale. It is well that people in all countries should learn to envisage tho character that a.n air war would assume, if it should ever take place. It is a very sinister fact that all strategists .base their strategy on the assumption that a future war will he as ruthless as the last—that means, a war upon civilian populations. As it seems to he the peculiar nature of modern war not to outlaw any brutality. it seems that the only hope for civilisation is to avoid it.”—“Daily Chronicle.”

UNSAFE POLITICIANS. “The Socialist principle is an unsafe guide in practical politics, and so long as the Labour Party ties its fortunes to that principle, so long will it he impossible for thinkers who have no faith in it to throw in their lot with that party. . . Tho Labour Party is not .likely to be a careful trustee of the national finances. Further, it is to a large extent under tho influence of a wing of extremists. whom in a time of dangerous crisis, it might not be able to control. And its constitution tends to rob the Parliamentary representatives of the constituencies of their independence, and to place them under the control of outside bodies.” Sir Herbert Samuel.

EMPIRE .MARKETING. “ If we can make our home markets more accessible to producers in distant parts of the Empire, our export trade will correspondingly benefit by the greater purchasing power of our overseas markets. Exports from this country to the Colonies have increased from some £18,000,000 in 1905 to ’. £60,000,009 in 1925, and imports into the United Kingdom from the Colonies have increased from £19,000.000 to £81,000,000 in the same period. That trade is capable of great expansion, and there is every assurance that the research work which is aliout to be undertaken will make nil important contribution to its growth and development,”— “ Daily Telegraph” (London),

BY THE SEA WE LIVE—OB DIE. “ Most of my audience are citizens of the United States. Tlie United States stands solid, impregnable, selfsufficient, all its essential lines of communication completely protected from any conceivable hostile attack. But suppose, for example, that your Western States were suddenly removed 10,000 miles across the sea. Suppose that the very heart of your Empire was a small and crowded island depending upon oversea trade, not merely for its luxuries, but for the raw material of those manufactures by which its superabundant population lives, and for the food upon which they subsist. Suppose it was a familiar thought that there was never a moment of the year when, within the limits of your State, there was more than seven weeks’ food for its population, and that that food could only be replenished by oversea communication. If you will draw this picture, and if you will realise all that it implies, you will understand why it is that no citizen of the British Empire, whether he he drawn from the far Dominions of the Pacific or lives in a small island in the North Sea. can ever forgot that it is by sea communication that he lives, and that without sea communication lie and the Empire to which he belongs would perish together.”— The Earl of Balfour.

THE SPIRIT OK THE UNIVERSE. "The urge to perfection and longing to help others towards perfection is the chief i huraeteristic of lie spirit of the uni torse as we lee! it within ourselves. Driving through es end through the world about e.s is the mighty impulse towards more (booted, love, richer beauty, and fuller truthand towards something diviner still

which wo cannot describe in words but dimly feel in our sotds. And this highest of all is what is at the very centre of spirit and is the divining power of the whole.

-‘Tt is in accordance with this Spirit that, whether we wish it or not. we have in the main to work. For to trangress it ;is destruction, as upon it we are dependent not only for our very lives but for all that makes life most worth living. So obviously that will he ilie most perfect country which is the most fully informed with this spirit and most closely conforms to,it. The perfect country will he continually perfecting itself—and perfecting itself in conformity to an ideal which it is likewise continually perfecting. In other words, it will ho perpetually striving hotter to know and act upon the will of (hid. —-Sir Francis Younghusband. the famous author and traveller.