A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 96, 17 January 1935, Page 7

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

British Shipping

Britain is leading the countries of the world in the amount of shipping tonnage under construction. By reason of the economic crisis the uncompleted hull of the Queen Mary lay on the slips for three years. Work was resumed as the result of financial assistance from the Government. Recently the Government announced its readiness to give a “defensive” subsidy to the tramp shipping industry for one year with the object of encouraging the abolition of foreign subsidies and the greater employment of United Kingdom shipping. In addition to the subsidy, the Government has indicated its willingness to afford financial facilities to shipowners to carry out a scrapping and rebuilding) or modernising scheme for cargo vessels. The latter offer indicates what has been the chief trouble with the United Kingdom and other shipping industries since the war. Despite the casualties of the war, the merchant shipping of the United Kingdom and other countries was expanded to a point far beyond any normal peacetime requirement. The crowning misfortune of the industry was the economic crisis, in which sea-horne trade sank to about one-third. Only by a reduction of tonnage, or an expansion of trade, or both, can a way be found back to prosperity for the industry. The re-' duction of tonnage is attained by not building and by the breaking-up of vessels. According to statistics the tonnage of ships broken up in 1933 reached the record total of 2.413,189 tons. The United Kingdom tonnage scrapped in the 10 years (1924-33) was 2,838,000 out of a world total of 10,334,000 tons. In 1933 only 489,000 tons were launched throughout the world, compared with 1,251,722 tons under construction in 1934. The record for world tonnage was made in 1913 when 3,250,000 tons were launched. Evolution of Man.

Sir John Ambrose Fleming has declared that the hypothesis-that man evolved over a vast period of time from a common parent with the anthropoid ape is a product of the imagination not based on indisputable evidence,’and that all the facts are much more consistent with the Biblical version of a post-glacial creation of mankind. Sir John has raised one of the most contentious questions of the day. If we ask the origin of all or any of the living species Which we see around us, and of which our own species is one, we plainly have to choose between two possibilities. Either they each beganindependently, somehow, as we see them now, or else they have originated from common ancestors, and by a process of evolution developed and diverged from one another. The doctrine, of their independent origin, according to which all the forms of animals and plants were created once and for all, as they are now, and have been maintained to the present day by the process of parenthood, “like begetting like,” is known as the doctrine of “special creation.” It is based on the story of the creation as given in Genesis: “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.’ And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kinds, and every winged fowl after its kind. . . . And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the field after its kind,’ and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the eattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ . . . And God created man in His own image, in the imago of God created He him; male and female created He him.” Iraq.

The 1200-mile pipe line connecting the Mesopotamia oilfields with the Mediterranean has been opened by the King of Iraq. Iraq is the Arab name for Mesopotamia and comprises the whole Euphrates country in south-west Asia—the former Turkish provinces of Basra, Bagdad and Mosul. It is nearly three times as large as the North Island. The country is a great alluvial plain stretching from the Persian Gulf 400 miles north, rising in rolling hills in Mosul and beyond to the limestone mountains of Kurdistan. The climate is sub-tropical and the rainfall (all in the winter months) is scanty, Bagdad averaging 6.64 inches in 29 years. The temperature varies widely: 120 degrees in the shade is not uncommon, and there are severe frosts in the winter. The country is unhealthy. The soil is of extraordinary fertility. The chief port is Basra. Bagdad, with an excellent airport opened in 1923, is the junction of four airway lines—the British Imperial Airways London-Karachi-Bombay service, the Royal Dutch Air Line between Amsterdam and the Dutch East Indies, the French Air-Orient from Paris to Indo-China, and the German junkers. The country is rich in petroleum. In southeastern Mesopotamia British interests have built great refineries to handle also the oil from the Persian fields. The Government in 1925 awarded concessions in the Bagdad and Mosul districts to the Turkish Petroleum Company. In this company British, Dutch, French and American groups each have quarter interests. The pipe line which has just been opened was begun' on September 15, 1932. King Ghazi ibn Feisal, who turned the tap to let the oil flow, is 23 years old and succeeded to the throne in September, 1933. Darwinian Theory.

Opposed to this theory of “special creation” is the theory of evolution. It does not, as all too many people think, do away with the idea of a Supreme Being, nor does it deny that the universe of living things is the work of the Creator. This theory has nothing whatever to say cocnerning the origin of life. It accepts the existence of living things, both plants and animals, as a fact, and seeks to find the laws and their modes of operation whereby living things in their long history and development on earth have changed in form and structure from what they were ages ago to what we find them to be to-day. It should be kept in mind that the problem is to explain how one species can produce another. The study of organic evolution deals only with the succession of forms, with the production of new forms by previously' existing ones. It has nothing to say concerning origins. How the living forms may have originated is certainly beyond the reach of biological science as yet. When one goes beyond the observed changes, and tries to trace the successions back to their source, one is in a region of speculation. and outside the boundaries of science. The scientific attitude is that the various kinds of animals and plants have somehow evolved from one another, higher forms being developed from simpler ones, and those from simpler still.