PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 11 March 1929, Page 8

PUBLIC OPINION

THE “PASSENGER.” /

.‘‘Life is not for mere passing pleasure: it is an opportunity for service. He who serves not his day and generation is a parasite. One who is not efficient fails in his service to his fel16"'s, thus being a ‘passenger’ through life instead of one of the brave band who help to speed up the progress of the world.”—H. T. Hamblin, in “The Art of Living.”

SUNDAY GAMES

“The issue does not lie simply between games and no games—there is a halting-place between the two extremes. first, let me make clear that oy games 1 do not mean spectacles like professional football and cricket, where the players are carrying on their ordinary business, from which they deserve a rest as much as the man who spends the week in an office. I mean oy games such amateur relaxations as tennis and golf, where the players are responsible only to themselves, and in the playing of such games l can see nothing wrong—certainly nothing irreligious. Why, then, you may ask, have I any hesitation in giving unqualified •approval of Sunday games? Simply tccause to give such approval has so often been taken to mean that games may rightly monopolise Sunday, and that I do not believe.”—The Rev. “Dick” Sheppard.

CHINA’S NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS.

“We must recognise that the growing sense of nationalism in China will make it increasingly difficult for her ever to recognise the ‘special interests, privileges and acquired rights’ of Japan m Manchuria—at all events, in Hie sense of admitting that these interests give Japan the right to intervene forcibly in Manchurian domestic affairs. Yet those special interests do unquestionably, exist, and they are of the first importance to Japan. Only if the Chinese Nationalist or provincial authorities are wise enough to promise protection for these interests and strong enough to mqke their promises good can an embarrassing situation prove innocent of harm”—“Manchester Guardian.”

THE NEW STATESMANSHIP,

“At present there is too much praise given to the safe men who, with a timidity which is often falsely called caution, cling to the old ways. The problems of human society demand a new type of statesmanship altogether, with the courage and integrity of the scientists in it, and unless the world comes under such leadership man maw master the skies, blit he will miserably fail to prove himself master of the earth.”—Dr Sidney Berry, in the •‘Yorkshire Observer.”

ANGLO-FRENCH SILVER WEDDING.

“For twenty-five years England and France have lived without pin-pricks,’’ writes Sir Thomas Barclay in the “Fortnightly Review.” “They might have celebrated their silver wedding, [’here is no French statesman of repute from M. Poincare to the latest recruit in the Ministry who does not consider the marriage as having been a happy one. The three European Powers which have most to lose in war, Great Britain, France, and Germany, ought to follow the example of 1903-4. To treat an Entente of either Power with Germany as detrimental to the other may prove fatal to the greatest safeguard of pease in the future. That there is, however, a popular feeling in favour of reconciliation both in England and in France, as well as in Germany, warants tbe bone that Governments will meet each other in their respective pending difficulties in the same spirit as did England and Francein 1904, and this would give the League of Nations an effective sanction for the preservation of peace, the fulfilment of its main purpose.”

LINKING UP I TER NAT IONA LL Y

“Changing moral ideas underlie all human progress, k would he futile to make treaties outlawing war if these treaties were in advance of public opinion. h.it the truth i.-, ;iiat the agreements now concluded gain their strength from the fact that they harmonise with opinion,’ writes Mr William Martin, who is associated with the Journal de Geneve, in the “Atlantic Monthly.” “Even so,” he adds, •‘morals are not enough. They are subject to sudden collapses, and laws •■M be established to maintain them. I u two-fold mechanism created by tbe League Covenant and the Kellogg Pact is based on morals and strengthens thorn. Economic and financial ties are bringing all nations closer and markets have bound tbe world in a network of common interests so closely woven that war, which was easy and natural in the past, becomes more and Micro a physical impossibility. It is ibis fact mere bum the texts of peace treaties and the security of nations which makes us believe in tbe duration of peace. Only sceptical or ignorant neiiple can believe that what has been a 1 wavs witi be. Tbe history of the world is a history of continued progress.”

HEALTH AND THE TIN-OPENER

“Nearly every individual now considers that a knowledge of food is as essential to him and his children as any other part of their education. The layman is most keenly interested in health matters, and is slowly realising that food is the basis of good health. He realises, too, that lie must have food which combines the merits of high nutritive value, purity, cleanliness, safety and easy preservation so that it will lie available • immediately lie requires it,” says Sir "William Arbuthnot Lane in a phainphlet issued by the New Health Society. “The canned foods of the great firms of to-day practically all fulfil these requirements, and there is no donut that the wellorganised research work of scientists ivill continue to expand still more the range of these excellent foodstuffs,- and so serve the interests of the public, the vast number of workpeople engaged in their manufacture and distribution, and the business world in general.”

ARE WE SATISFIED

“Arc we satisfied? All that is best in us cries out. and will not let us rest. In practice we have accepted a philosophy which our intellects reject, against which our souls rebel,” writes George- A Birmingham in the “Daily Chronicle.” “Can we always, can we even for any long time, remain in this state of self-contradition ? The thing is plainly impossible, and already there are signs everywhere that men are struggling hack to a nobler theory of the way in which life should he lived. Our philanthropies, half hysterical sometimes, our gropings after spirits in dim places, our wildly irrational assertions of the lordship of mind over the ills of the body, our pathetic clingings to long-forsaken faiths—all these are witnesses to the fact that we are not content with the materialism to which, for a’ while, we have bowed our knees as to a god. As a philosophy of life it is not (lead, or nearly dead; hut in the womb of society throe arc the flutterings of another life, signs of the coming of the birth of a conviction that if materialism is not dead at least it ought to he.”