PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 29 December 1931, Page 2

PUBLIC OPINION

SIR OLIVER. LODGE AND THE CREATOR.

“By the majority of .humanity God is thought of as u controlling and guiding Power, responsible for all other existence and for the laws under which the whole works,” writes Sir Oliver Lodge in the “Quiver.” “Yet another inode of regarding the Infinite Being is one with a benevolent interest in all His creatures, who wishes them to develop their own powers, and gradually fit themselves to become companions and friends, Indeed, the highest idea yet attained by humanity is that of a loving Father, able to take a pergonal interest in all His children, and not scrupling to reveal gome of HL Attributes under the limitations of a human personality; who was horn under exceptionally simple conditions, and lived an ordinary (or, perhaps, an extraordinary) human life on this one inhabited planet, in order to show what is within the compass of mankind, and what in due time they may hope to attain to. There is nothing in physics or astronomy to contradict this view.”

ON A BALANCE.

In a confession, “What I Believe, ” Arnold Bennett wrote; “ There may be a Heaven, there may be a. Hell, and, also there may not be. I don’t know, and I feel sure that on on earth I. shall never know. On a balance of probabilities I am inclined to accept the theory of a future life, and I am fairly sure that if, indeed, there is a future life, my conduct in this present life will materially affect the nature of it.”

MORAL ISSUES OF THE CRISIS

“Like all emergencies,” comments the “Morning Post,” “material as it may seem, the essence or governing element is moral and spiritual,a question both of the courage to face and the resolution to redeem the misfortune. There we believe the British nation will not fall, as it never failed in the dark days of the War, nor in the course of its history when it has been treated fairly and squarely by a Government in which it could put its trust. And there are in this situation, dark as it may seem, certain-elements of consolation. One is that there ar e vast stores of food and raw material in this country and in the British Empire upon which the nation can draw, it need be, for some time, so that no scarcity nor even any immediate or considerable rise in prices is to be apprehended. Another is that this foreign complication does not 'discredit the internal position of our British banks. Our domestic business, which has long been conducted on a basis of paper, supported by the confidence of our own people in their banks, will be unaffected by this international crisis.”