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Hokitika Guardian, 1 March 1933, Page 4

“English power and influence are conditioned by loyalty to certain ideas which wo have gradually incorporated —at least, we have come nearer to incorporating them than any other nation; and these ideas, not abstractly, but. by their substantial hold on our national life - , are our essential gift to the world, and the only durable foundation of our Empire,” says Mr basil de Selincourt, in an article in the London Observer. “If is surely one of the chief perplexities of the modern world that ideas travel everywhere. In their impact on minds unfitted to receive them, ideas, political ideas especially, are like matches to tinder; and the world is therefore full of hotheads, of bra ini 5 burning to no purpose, destined infallibly to burn out.. But that rices not entitle us to go around in our superior wisdom, sternly controlling the hotheads and ruthlessly extinguishing their light. . . llow lamentable it would he, should another great nation fall out with us on the plausible ground that we were renegr.des from liberty, betrayers of ihuinanity and pence. I do net myself believe that the requirements of peace or liberty or humanity are better understood by any people than

by us, but the fact that another great people, unfettcired by self-knowledge, fermenting with untried' ideaMsm, believes already that it understand!;- them bettor than we do is a tremendous fact, with which we must reckon. And it is no good getting hot about it. On the contrary, recognising the terrible lessons reserved for that nation, lessens which onJ|,y experience can teach, I cannot hut hope they will be learned as far as possible at its own expense, rather than ours.”