EXUBERANT STUDENTS

Shannon News, 24 December 1925, Page 3

EXUBERANT STUDENTS

MR. BALDWIN CHAFFED. POLITICS Aln D PHILOSOPHY. LONDON, November 7. Exuberant students at. Edinburgh University gave a riotous greeting to the Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, and played practical jokes throughout his Rectorial address. Girl students .joined in, using peashooters and throwing bushels of Brussels sprouts from the gallery. Much amusement was caused when a string of cardboard pigs moved^ across the platform, this being in reference to Mr. Baldwin's keen interest in stock breeding. When the Prime Minister was making a solemn peroration about truth in*politics the audience was convulsed by an enormous briar pipe being lorvercd from the ceiling. Mr. Baldwin’s speech betokened elaborate preparation. It included (quotations from Socrates. Grotius. Goethe. Spinoza, Beranger, H. G. Wells, Nurse Cavell. Bentham, Kipling, Locke, Mlil. Lord Acton and Maehiavelli. Nowhere was there a higher standard of commercial honesty than in Britain said Mr. Baldwin, but a different standard existed in politics, primarily because ever since States began they had depended on force for safety.

“Further, democracy is government by talk,” he continued. “Although ei political audience is not dishonest,, it is imperfectly prepared to follow a close argument. It is therefore easy to understand why a /speaker who is endeavouring to make a profound impression circulates promises which be cashed.”

Socrates was the Athenian philosopher whose teachings are expounded in the dialogues of Plato. Hugo Grotius ,n 17th century Dutch thinker, by his work on “War and Peace,” founded modern international law. “Faust,” Die masterpiece of Goethe, greatest of German poetr, is part of the world’s culture. The daring pantheistic speculations of Spinoza,. the mediaeval Jew, have many exponents to-day. Berangor’s lyrics, especially those which celebrate the “Napoleonic Legend,” are beloved by the French people. Jeremy Bcntham economist and jurist, worked for prisons and other social reforms. By his famous “Essay on the Human Understanding,” John Locke, the 17th century thinker, paved the way for modern “empiricism” and materialism. John Stuart Mil], the Victorian philosopher-logician, was an exponent of the French “positivist,” Auguste Comte. He did much for the emancipation of women, and is identified with Utilitarianism. Lord Acton was the British historian who planned the Cambridge Modern History. Machiavelli. the Renaissance Florentine, was frank enough to expound, in “The Prince,” maxims of statecraft which politicians often follow, and always disavow.