NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 October 1929, Page 8

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS

A VISIT TO THE WAR GRAVES. “The great war. cemeteries are beautifully kept. The loneliness of them strikes at the heart. One has but'to see them in their stillness, and one becomes an enemy of wan.”—Mr Tom Shaw, British Secretary of State for War, in an interview. THE BIBLE AS A SCHOOL BOOK. / “In the day school the Bible is a textibook, not only for conduct and morality, but also for English literature and world history,” said Mr W. Hughes Jones, in a speech reported in the “Daily Telegraph” (London). “The story of the origin and development of our own civilisation is written on almost every page of the Old Testament. Ezekiel is an original and most trustworthy authority on tlto industrial apd commercial conditions of his day; the writer of the' ‘.Book of Esther is an authority on politics, and the administration of government; and Exodus is nothing short of an encyclopaedia of the arts and crafts of the ancient world.” WOMEN WHO EX CELL . “The women who, out of scant: - materials and under difficult conditions produces a good .dinner, has a« much right to her full portion of prakse and appreciation as the woman who gets into the semi-finals at Wimbledon. But does she get it ? Sin dees not.” writes Susan. Ertz in the “Daily Chronicle.” “One of the bitterest things' abouf housework, the care of children, or any common task is the fact that the performers 8" rarely get thanked or rewarded foputting the best there is in them int' - it. Some day, when even the busiest and most hard-pressed woman has a little more leisure and a little more money for the graces of life and living is looked upon as an art rather than a sordid struggle, more admiration and praise will be ceded to the woman who excels it now than falls to her lot.”

CHURCH DRAMA. “One of the striking features of Free Church life to-day is the .. attention which is being given to the drama as a means of Christian education. It is often a tragedy to see young people with any amount of dramatic talent prostituting their gifts in 'sketches,’ or ‘dialogues’ that are worse than valueless, and it is high time the denominations did something constructive by suggesting the -right kind of play,” writes Dr., Albert Peel, in the “Congregational Quarterly!” “Many churches have already made progress on these Some of them have dramatic societies that are extremely ambitious. Others attempt pageants on a small scale. Recently we have had several dramatisations of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ while the Congregational Church of St. Ives. Hunts, has successfully dramatised the ‘Book of Ruth.’ 1 WHAT WE MAY BE LIKE. V “We, at present, are escaping from the most personal and subjective era in the world’s history; an age when personality has been glorified and exalted above all else. I believe that by reaction, and .through the evergrowing importance of scientific method and results, the declining vears of the twentieth century will be distinguished hv an insistence on the objective in all departments of human activity,” writes Lord Birkenhead, in the “Century Magazine.” “Thus by >029 men and women will seem, judged by our standards, harsh and unemotional. They will have recaptured and transformed inti) new fashions, the precision,; lucid sense and keen criticism which distinguished the small educated', world of tlic eighteenth century. Wit, rather than humour, comedy rather than force, reason rather than sentiment, polish rather than ingenuousness, will be valued. It will be an age in which Caesar or Voltaire might repeat Ins famous triumphs; but where Garibaldi would lack bis meed of glory, and Dickens would sob in vain.”

IMPERIALLY OR CONTINENTALLY ?

“It may well lie that the next few years will see the beginning of a new movement which will eventually decide the destiny of the British Empire,’ : writes the Rt .Hon. Neville Chamber'ain, M.P., in the “Empire Review.” ■Many years ago a. great dominion •tatesman declared, ‘Either we must Iraw closer together, or we must move "anther apart.’ Today, the alteratives are being pressed upon us with increasing urgency. We, in these islands, cannot stand by ourselves alone. If we do not think imperially we shall have to think continentally. There can be no doubt where our sentiments lie, nor as to which of these alternatives offers us the speediest and most effective way out of our trouble. The markets of the Empire, have already become responsible for the consumtion of half our exports of Britsh produce and manufactures.”

- THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND. “In England everything lingers on and changes, as the cloudland in our sky, ‘the 'veil of Maya, the heavenly Penelope, is woven and rent perpetually’. ‘But if the mind of England is wrapped in mists, it is touched with ethereal colours; and who should measure the benign influences, the manliness, the comforts, the moral sanity that have, spread from it through the world?’ This is the spirit not only of England hut of Anglicanism. Where else could there he a Church which cannot make up its mind whether it is Catholic of Protestant, which is never willing wholly to give up this world lor the next, nor the next for this; a Church which keeps the via media like a sailor on shore, by rolling from one side to the other; a Church which for good and evil, reflects the qualities of the kindliest, most merciful, most illogical, most practical and most sentimental race on earth ? In a country church and churchyard the Englishman is finally at home.”—Dean Inge in the “Church of England Newspaper.” 1

THE PATIENT OX. “For the first time since the war” says the “New Statesman,” “the over burdened British taxpayer has found a spokesman who is ready, boldly and openly, to defend, his pocket. Naturally he is very pleased about it, pleased at the prospect of seeing the end of the systematic blackmail to which he lias been subjected for so long. For blackmail it has been for the most part. France recognised at an early stage the profound - disinclination of British negotiators to squabble over money matters and has made the most of her knowledge, ever since. Italy has jpined in the> game as far as she has been able. Under the plan worked out by the Young Committee of Experts which is now under consideration at The Hague, England was to make substantial sacrifices to the* advantage of France and Italy merely for the sake of securing some sort of permanent settlement. They need a settlement as much as we do, yet we are to pay them to agree to- it! That is what has happened over and over again.”

MEASURING NOISE. “The mischief of . noise in modern life especially in town life, is notorious and admitted by all; but the concrete evidence is extremely hard to come by. It cannot be shown on the stage of a microscope or iii ! a jar of spirit, nor can the effects of noise on the nervous system be satisfactorily separated from the many other ! nocuous results of modern life,” says the “British Medical Jburnai'.F “The police cannot lay hands upon a noise, however tremendous ifc be, so afe (to bring it before, a magistrate for condemnation, until they are equipped with sfcandarised recording instruments. Indeed, the question of definition of nocuous noises and the distinction of harmful from harmless 1 sounds is one of t-lie fundamental difficulties of the whole matter.”

A POLITICAL QUESTION FOR WOMEN.

“Let us take the bull by the horns and allow that, given the lack of habit among women of concerning themselves seriously with politics, those who -feared that ‘the girls would vote as their boys advise,’ were justified of that fear,” writes Dame Ethel Symth in the “Daily Telegraph.” It behoves us to get rid as quickly as possible of that inevitable result of age-long relegation to the background, the spirit of dependence; in fact, the slave spirit. The commonest symptom of this disease of the soul, which the strong fresh air ‘off freedom alone can cure, is a readiness to accept, and, parrotlike, to repeat, pronouncements we have always been accustomed to hear advanced by men as satisfactory and final, though many of us remember feeling instinctively, even as children that it wasn’t ‘quite so glib as that’ ; Mrs Pankhurst used to call it ‘letting men do our thinking for us.’ Before another general election comes along we shall have learned a thing or two I trust. And then, whatever happened in 1929, it must be a case of thinking for ourselves.”

MECHANISED WARFARE. “The outstanding menace is that of mechanised warfare. When machines are already available in a hundred air ports to abolish- England or France or the eastern seaboard of the United States in a few hours’ time, it borders on futility to talk pf upward curves and shining futures. If a few stupid politicians can on nearly any bright morning, give the word to a handful of hot-headed boys to blow -the world to hits, progress and the hope of progress become the watering of a rose garden on the brink of a .volcano. If mechanised warfare is not' abolished before the next major outbreak of hostilities mechanical civilisation becomes the most colossal liability homo sapiens ever blundered into.” writes Stuart Cnaso in “Current History.”