TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 21095, 29 May 1930, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

“During the five years Reichspraeident Hinderberg has been in office he has been behind every movement of constructive statesmanship,” says Professor A. B. Faust, in Current History. “He has held the plumb-line in building and reconstruction operations, and has made the builders follow the architects’ plans (i.e., the Weimar Constitution). He has kept the labourers from striking by subduing party dissensions. Five months after his inauguration, In October, 1925, the Locarno pledges, immortalizing the names of Stresemann and Briand, were signed, although by supporting them Hindenburg resisted intense opposition from the party that brought him into power. In September of the following year came the entry of Germany into the League of Nations, again in spite of opposition from the Nationalist Party. Hindenburg clearly saw the advantage for his country, an end of octracism and the regaining of a seat and a voice in the councils of the great nations. Still another positive achievement during Hindenburg’s administration w’as the testing of the Dawes Plan, and its subsequent revision into the Young Plan. ... At the age of 78 he assumed the heavy responsibility of guiding the fortunes of his people through stormy seas. Defying time —zeitlos—the majestic figure of Hindenburg holds securely in his grasp what has been saved from the wreck —German national unity, the heritage of Bismarck. With a nation newborn Hindenburg, at 83, looks courageously into the future.”

Writing on the eve of her husband’s delivery of the British Budget, Mrs Philip Snowden said, in an article in the Sunday News; —“Those people who enjoy being miserable are particularly happy just now! They eay our industries are going to pieces, our trade is declining, the unemployed increase daily; we are decadent, we are idle, we are losing our nerve; our old people are senile, our young people are impossible, the country is done for, and we might as well all bo dead. I feel rather ashamed to hear this feeble whining in the ears of the whole world. We have our sorrows and our difficulties, of course, but we can face them and conquer them. We have brains and energy and will if we ; care to use them. Why give the impression that wq have none of these things? . . . . They lie who say we are decadent and done for. There is no freer nation on the face of the earth. There is no nation where there can be found, man for man, a larger measure of' honest good will to all. There is no nation which possesses a greater gift of friendship or a more generous attitude to a fallen foe. There is no braver nation, nor one with more sturdiness of character, nor one with a more highly-developed social conscience. Then away with depression and . foolish fears. We are ‘up against it’ just now, but we have been up against it before. 'We triumphed over our difficulties in the past. We shall do so again. But do let us go into the struggle With smiles on pur faces and shouts on our lips, leading the van, not slinking to the rear; for that which we-,be-lieve, we can do. And we may believe that Britain can and will be saved.”