"Taranaki Central Press” THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1937. THE MODERATE MAN.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 369, 25 February 1937, Page 4

"Taranaki Central Press” THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1937. THE MODERATE MAN.

A plea for moderation was made by Lord Tweedsmuir, the Gov-ernor-General of Canada, and more familiar to some as John Buchan, in an address to the Convocation of Queen’s University, Canada. “We are living in a confused and difficult world, and in such a time the human mind is predisposed to hasty conclusions, said Lord Tweedsmuir.

‘We are all inclined to look for some short cut out of our troubles, some violent course which will shift things suddenly into a new orbit. Patience, reasonableness, what wet call common sense, are apt to seem counsels of despair. The moderate man is at a discount. Moderation in the ordinary sense is not supposed to have much attraction for youth. It is assumed to be an attribu te of disillusioned middle life, or even of old age.

“Youth desires to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm, and has little love for the half-hearted or even the temperate. Its model is Hotspur, not Nestor. It is shy of prudential counsels and the maxims of common sense. Its power lies in its enthusiasm. The familiar French proverb, If only youth had knowledge, if only old age had power,’ points to a popular belief that certain endowments and functions are incompatible. Vitality cannot co-exist with wisdom; wisdom involves laggard feet, weakened sinews and a faint heart.

“The moderate man is eternally ineffective. I would suggest to you that this view is a fallacy, for it accepts a shallow definition of moderation. It assumes that il is the stark opposite of enthusiasm. But the man of energy need not be the rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntary.

“The wise man need not be a sort of Buddha who is content to sit still and twiddle his thumbs. Coleridge said that no great thing Aras ever accomplished without enthusiasm, and that is simple truth; works are impossible without faith. But I wish to divest the word ‘moderate’ of the sinister associations which are apt to surround it, and offer the moderate man to you as a type most worthy of imitation, a type more valuable, more effective and, 1 think, more genuinely attractive than the mere fighting man, whose head is filled with battle-cries which he imperfectly understands.

Education’s Shortcomings.

Disssatisfaction with the results of the educational system is expressed in a continuous stream of criticism that shows no signs of abating, says the Church Times. In a presidential address to the annual congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Miss Agnes Muir posed the question. Is Education a Failure? and answered it with something perilously near an affirmative.

The keys of learning and of culture seem to grow rustier with d suse, the more widely their use is made available. There is enough truth in this conclusion for it to be thoroughly disturbing. The truth is that education itself is being made too cheap, not in ccst, but in kind. Nobody ever learned anything much worth knowing without effort, and yet the whole trend of modern popul ar education is to try and eliminate effort. Noses that have never been put to the grindstone will never be sharp.