TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20259, 30 July 1937, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Youth and Politics. “ The complaint is general that new men fit to be the political leaders of the future are not in sight. Yet there never was so much youthful talent spending itself on writing, talking, lecturing, and theorising about politics, and yet failing to find any practical outlet; failing in the main because it has got harnessed to theories and ideologies which cannot be fitted, and never will be fitted, into the British way of life. I read the literature produced by these young men and find it full of ideas which in due proportion would be extremely useful, but I find them accompanied by a contempt for the practical and a scorn for the compromises and adjustments without which government simply cannot proceed in. a free country. “ They demand all or nothing. Since ‘all’ means that their ideas would need to be imposed here, as elsewhere, by measures which would bo fatal to freedom and democracy, they get nothing. Constant denunciations of everything and everybody lose their effect l>y mere repetition. Those who can see nothing jolly or happy in the life about them become mere misanthropes and no one listens when they scold. The last thing to be desired is the rule of the aged in any country, but when the young seem prematurely old, and talk and write like embittered and disillusioned grey-beards, they fail to give ns the special contribution for which we Iqolc from youth.”—J. A. Spender, in the “Yorkshire Observer.” Head and Heart. “Nowadays, unfortnnately, Hie men of heart and the men of head seem to find it increasingly difficult to co-operate with one anolher. The man of head regards ihe man of heart as a sentimentalist who talks vaguely about questions he lms‘never learnt to understand and whose complexity he fails to appreciate. It is absurd, the man of head says, to suppose that problems of economies can be tackled effectively without economic training, and merely cruel to lead people suffering from social evils to suppose that n little good will is the only remedy required. The man of heart, on bis side, is usually ready to admit that there is some force in these arguments. His complaint, however, is that the experts who ought, on"their own showing to be the very persons to deal with social problems are apparently almost as baffled by them as be is himself.” ,—Yorkshire Post.