14 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 4

In bygone days, in Palestine and elsewhere, obsolete doctrines about

the possession of money being a stewardship gained a• certain fleeting currency. The twentieth century of the Christian era has known how to change all that. In one week, or at most ten days, it has had the edification of seeing a Spanish gentleman spending the equivalent of some £.60,000 on a single evening's entertainment ; of King Farouk of Egypt and his seventeen-year- old queen returning from a holiday which is said to have cost them £1,500 a day ; of parties of those vicarious sportsmen who have made England what she is flying to the United States to see two pugilists punch each other for an hour or so. It is sometimes said by misquoters that money is the root of all evil. What the apostle wrote was not " money" but "the love of money "—as all Bible students, like the people I have mentioned, are no doubt well aware. They, manifestly, have nothing on their consciences. To love money is not compatible with a passion for getting rid of it. And none of them, no doubt, can think of a better way of disposing of it than the way they have chosen. For such things as famines in India and wretched refugees in Europe lie outside their mental horizon.