PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 August 1928, Page 1

PUBLIC OPINION.

THE TEST OF LIFE. 1 Tlie test of life is not what you are worth, but what you ape. If your mind is at peace you can face poverty with a smije. I do not teach poverty as a path to peace. But the marvellous happiness of the poor majority proves that poverty is not pessimism. If all poor men and all poor women were miserable, despairing, and devoured by envy, the system of life would not function. The truth is that society is built on a solid foundation of comparative failures who are alchemists of contentment. They are like the birds, who are always poop, and nevertheless are miraculously joyous. There are plenty of human sparrows and thrushes and blackbirds who can sing with nothing to make a song about.” —Mr. James Douglas ip tho “Daily Express.” RAISING THE SCHOOL AGE. In a ecent speech on the Hadow report and its plan for raising the school ago, turned down on account of cost, Major H. L. Nathan said: “Here was a chance for a first-class measure of social reform—to equip our children with better opportunities of making a decent thing of life. A case cannot he made against the proposals even on mercenary grounds. For is it not far hotter to pay more to keep the children at school than to pay, to keep in idleness, their parents who have been driven put of employment by child labour? Education is the one gilt-edgetj security in the Exchequer investments. From investments in education we get- not merely a high rate of interest in respect of increased happiness and emptying prisons, but have ail appreciation of capital in the improved physique and higher technical efficiency of the nation.”

THIS OLD-YOUNG WORLD, s “ Mon have liy.ed, vve now know, foi about ten thousands of generations al least on this planet, and only the lasi seventy have felt an urge and a. guid a nee towards any definite end and purpose in education. The world b very old: and the world is also verj ; young. AA’e have hundreds, thousands - of generations lie fore us. This is r - Pew revelation to men. AA’hat does - it mean? It involves new duties, a t new purpose in life. AA’e are begin- > ning to see that certain races, of which our own is one, are now moving under the guidance of a Spirit, greater than themselves—a Spirit innate, eternal, divine. AYc are at a stage in a long process, of which we dimly see a beginning, and cannot see an end. It is this thought that gives a large unity and meaning to history. That Spirit works through men, by meu, in men.” —Canon J. M. AA’ilson. | THE FUTURE QF THE FAITH. “ .Alcn are endlessly repealing that this or that has shaken the foundations of faith. AA’hat I complain of is that it has shaken the foundations of doubt. It has altered, and very much lowered, the grounds even of unbelief. The criticisms sound like the cries of children or savages, compared with the wary and well-poised consistency of some of the old masters of negation. There must he something very queer and deleterious at work in the world, when this unreason saps, as it does sap. the minds of very acute and brilliant men, as well as those merely receptive. I am not at all disturbed about the future of the faith; but I am disturbed about tho future of the doubters, and the prospect of such very unpliilosopliie doubt; in which the very blasphemies have grown feeble and even stark nothing cannot remain unclouded or unconfused.” —G. Iv. Chesterton. THE PURPOSE OF RATING REFORM. “ The purpose of rating reform is not to give a free stimulus to unprosperous enterprises—to place a premium on possible faulty control of bad organisation. The purpose of rating reform is to stimulate all productive industry. There is no industry so prosperous that it cannot he stimulated to employ more persons, or, by adjusting its production costs, to contribute indirectly to cinployment. It is, to pur mind, this ultimate effect upqn employment which must be the test of Mr Churchill's scheme, and it is the capacity to enlarge employment which has determined the categories of hereditaments of the present Bill.”—“ Yorkshire Post.”

AVAGPS AND THE COLOUR BAR. “If all the colour bars, legal and customary, were abolished, probably very few Europeans would logo their jobs, provided that their ‘wage-rates were on a strictly economic footing. But wlipre their work is rated too high, because the natives’ wprk is rated top low, the competition of the latter is far more dangfifous. }t is also 100 commonly assumed that the amount of employment is static. The best insurance agaipst unemployment for the European is more pppfjuciipn, and more epmsumption, which will create a need for mpre men of all categories. Increa.secl demand f°F manufactures is much mope likely to come from improving the native’s productive and cpmsumptive power than by repressing his eepnojnjp ambitiop. He can legitimately claim not to replace the white piaji, hut to have sonic prospect pf promotion when he .becomes capable of doing lnorp than the simplest work. If he is to |;e made a really useful worker tip's cjajm wiM have to be generally admitted ap it has already been admitted in some industries. To reject it will become ipereasingly difficult as, with the improvement of inter-coinipunipation, its admissipn in other parts of Africa becomes eoipmon luipwedge.”—HTJie Ronnd Table.”

COMMUNISTS AND THE TRADE UNIONS.

“The Communists are in a. different category front other members of trade unions. They have sold their birthright to revolutionary dictators and have tried to corrupt the trade unions they profess to support. They have pledged themselves to carry out instructions, not of their trade union members, hut pf the Red International. They owe their allegiance, both economically and politically, to organisa-

tions which are aimed at destroying the established trade union movement. If Tory and Liberal trade unionists did the same thing, they would be treated similarly. AYhen the disruptionists learn that the trade unions are determined not to endure their antagonistic activities, they will realise that trade unionism, "which has its roots in the suaffering, the privation, the sacrifices and the triumphs of over a century, does not intend to be dominated by those who are avowedly hostile to ife declared principles and policy.”—Dir * AYalter Citrine, 'general secretary of the British Trade Union Congress,"