1937-04-15 — Page 10

10.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely, sobers us again. (Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism).

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has been the subject of criticism throughout the Far East for many years, and is proclaimed the Finest increasing in Mineral Water produced, popularity.

ever

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THE CHINA MAIL, APRIL 15, 1937.

The China Mail

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London Office: 7, Garrick Street, London, W.CZ. Notice To Contributors.

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Hong Kong, Thursday, April 15, 1937

Surely the only hope for a die- tracted world is the continued sanity of the great democracies.

A Dying Language?

It will be something of a shock to Gaelic-speaking Scots to learn that the University of Oslo is organising an expedition to Scotland to record the various All communications intended for dialects of Scottish Gaelic while publication should be addressed to there is yet time. Professor the Editor, and be accompanied by Marstrander and his assistants the Writer's Name and Address, fear that the language is doomed not necessarily for insertion but and are determined that it shall as a guarantee of good faith.

not, like Manx and Cornish, pass documen- without leaving full tary proof of its existence. The Norwegians propose to spend three years on their work, mak- ing phonetic transcriptions and gramophone records and prepar- ing the way for a dictionary of Gaelic They will meet with hearty co-operation from all in Scotland who can help them, but their mission will cause some heart-searching

the among Gaels. Unfortunately, on a long view, the apprehensions of the The news that from hence- Norwegian linguists would seem forth instruction in military to be justified. Gaelic is still matters is to form an important spoken by some 130,000 of Scot part in the education of all chil-land's population, mainly in Ross dren in the Soviet Union over the and Cromarty, Sutherland, In- age of eight years serves as a verness, and Argyll, and in many reminder if reminder be need-villages in those counties church ed of the extent to which war, services are held alternately in and preparations for war, have Gaelic and in English. But ten encroached upon the lives of vast years earlier the number was populations in the modern world. 150,000, and to-day it makes a Where, not so very long ago, war poor showing in Scotland's popu- was the concern of comparative-lation of 4,500,000. In Wales and ly small armies of professional in Ireland the Celtic tongue is in soldiers, it now enters into the no danger. Wales boasts 31 per man and cent. of Welsh speakers, and the consciousness of every

that 17. per woman in the community. Even Free State claims

its citizens talk Erse. children are not to be exempt cent. of

Various cultural movements from the prevailing madness.

---

ARMS AND THE CHILD

*

pro-

Under the Russian law just have lately aimed at reviving Gaelic, but without promulgated, not only will chil- Scottish

With this warn- dren be given lessons in military much success.

they will. science and strategy, but they ing from Norway will also be encouraged to play doubtless redouble their efforts. games of a military nature. But Russia is not alone in this mili-

For Dorset Place-Name tarisation of the young. years Signor Mussolini has pur- sued

Dorset is a county richly a policy of subjecting young Italians to à rigid dis-sprinkled with quaint and attrac- cipline which catches them up in tive place-names, and the "Map- the toils of a semi-military or-powder with Plush" (the united ganisation at the incredibly early benefice to which the present age of six years, and only re- holder of a curacy at Standish leases them. when they are too has just been appointed) old to fight. A similar process vides a particularly pleasant ex- In certain has gone on in Germany ever ample of them. since Hitler came to power. Nor sporting quarters "to be on vel- is that the only or even the vet" carries entirely agreeable major evil. Not content with associations; but to be on Plush exercising a supreme control (with Mappowder added) sounds over the bodies of their citizens, as though it should represent the essence of truly rural the modern dictatorships have very left no method untried of sub-charm. Standish by comparison duing their minds as well. Adult sounds almost erect and uncom- the uncompromising citizens are subjected to a con- fortable tinuous and all-pervasive pro-North as against the more yield- paganda that only the most criti- ing South. cally-minded

Mappowder is the more im-. overt opposition is ruthlessly portant of the pair, and even In the schools, chil- that could hardly be described as dren, at the most impressionable a congested area; it had a popu- stage in their lives are taught a lation of 168 in 1901, but twenty falsified kind of history that years later it had dropped to 157. the unromantic exalts the national State

According to glorifies war at the expense of all census return poor old (but un- Plush the civilised virtues of tolerance doubtedly picturesque) and understanding.

crushed.

can

resist and

and

has no population at all of its What a curious, topsy-turvy, very own; it is certified to be world it is in which children, just a "locality,” and its resi- hardly out of the nursery, are dents are apparently lumped in instructed in the arts of killing: with those of Cerne Abbas, where in which their harmless toys are the "Cerne Giant," staff in hand, exchanged for models of the strides over the chalk downs into instruments of war and their which his 180-foot figure was say by monks and story-books for manuals on the cut, some

say by ancient Britons.. use of machine guns! Certainly, some a civilisation which fosters such Cerne Abbas is the nearest place. Both an outlook in the younger gen- that is generally known; eration is nursing within itself Mappowder and Plush: may be. the seeds of its own destruction. regarded as its satellites.

"