LATE CABLE NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 13 July 1931, Page 6

LATE CABLE NEWS

THE HARPSFI ELD CRASH. DEATH OF AIRS GALLIER. LONDON, June 19. It is officially announced that the second victim of the air crash near Harpsfield, in which the pilot, Miss Sicele O’Brien, and a woman companion were killed, was Airs Gordon Gallier, who had braved many unknown dangers in her life. Her husband is an official oi the An-glo-Persian Oil Company, and is now hurrying home from Persia. Airs Gallier, whose modesty prevented her' from becoming well known, though she has been presented at Court, was learning to fly in order to surprise her husband on his return. She was an intrepid traveller. She discovered an unknown waterfall in Tanganyika, and scientifically surveyed th© surroundings; she went, unaccompanied, except by native bearers, through the Sudan to the borders of Abyssinia, travelled almost alone in Central Australia, and motored alone to Damascus and Baghdad.

“CAN’T PREVENT WAR.”

NATURE’S PRUNING HOOK

LONDON, June 18

Seated in his room at the Royal College of . Surgeons, Professor Arthur Keith to : day replied to the criticisms of his remarkable rectorial address at Aberdeen University entitled "The Place of Prejudice in Alodern Civilisation.”

In an interview with the Evening News he especially replied to Mr John Dr ink water’s critical verse, which concluded :

“If you have no better gospel for salvation for the young, “Then, in the name of science for

God’s sake hold your tongue;” “l admit that my speech was antipacifist,” said Professor Keith. “I feel that many excellent people who are striving to prevent war are wrong, and 1 must speak out. If the nations did not strive desperately for their independence they would frustrate the whole of their evolutionai-y history.

“Mr Drinkwater and many other estimable people may not like my -statement that war is Nature’s pruning book, but it is so. War does kill off thi best of a nation’s youth, hut the stock is not affected. It is nonsense to say that Britain is suffering because she lost many of her finest young men in the war. We are too much obsessed by the peace-and-unity attitude, and shrink from hardship and suffering. Everything worth having in life is only attainable by risk. The nation which is unwilling to sacrifice its- life will cease to exist.”

“Patriotism which, to-day, is neither useful nor of economic value, and love of independence, are essential parts in Nature’s evolutionary scheme,” said Professor Keith, in the address which provoked the criticism, “Race prejudice or national antagonism has to be purchased, not with gold, but with life .... Though my dream of the future is a world without war, my advice is to give prejudices their place in civilisation, under reason’s control. . * Prejudice will continue to bifid British nationalities together, hut if the union is to withstand the stress of conflicting interests, then the heart must be strengthened by clear-sighted intelligence.”