PUBLIC OPTION.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 March 1928, Page 4

PUBLIC OPTION.

THE SPIRIT OF LOCARNO. “ In Norway you sing to tills day the death of that mighty mail who tried to lay violent hands on the independence of your country. In every man there lives the memory of the battles niiit heroes of the past hut tliat memory is not incompatible with love of peace for the future. So does repose most appeal to him whose life has been one of struggle and strife. So does the sea seem most calm after it has been lashed by the storm. Lei us not deceive ourselves: this work of ours is no paradise. But what w do ami must wish ardently is that th future shall bring forth a new era solidly based on the ideals that have sprung out of the hlood shed in the battles of the past. Where, I as! you. should this he more elcarlj seen than in Europe, and particularly in that part of Europe that most suffered from the war? The policy t l.ocarno is incompatible with a policy of distrust, of oppression, or of force. The policy of Locarno is the policy of mutual understanding and free will. It is the policy of faith in a new future. Contrasted to the policy of the past, ii should be the policy of the future.”— l)r Stresemnnn. THE SEA HAS CONE. 11 It has long been a commonplace of our politics that peace is tlie greatest of British interests. That has been true in the past. It is still more true now. A hundred 'years ago it was plausible to sing ‘Rule, Britannia,’ and declare that Britain needed no bulwark's. The sea was then a very perfect defence as long as we bad the mastery of it. But that is no longer the ease. In the first place there is our food supply, of which we heard so much in the three-Power Conference at (lonova. There are also our textile industries, all dependent on imported wool and cotton. Above all we have created by the skill and energy of our people an immense and elaborate system of credit on which our prosperity and almost our existence depends.”— Lord Cecil.

THE BOLDEN" ACE OF .MEDICINE. •• I would take exception to a recent description of the present time as the 1 golden ago of medicine,’ ” said the late Professor E. H. Starling, dealing with “A Century of Physiology.” "We associate a golden age with an epoch of great achievement, which attains its zenith and then dies away. But physiology and the science ol medicine have hardly begun. As I have pointed out, the greater part of the physiological odilico of to-day dates from the last fifty years, and has been raised within the lifetime of many of us. And every year more workers and greater powers are enlisted in Iho sor- \ ice or resell roll, so that the rate of increase of knowledge grows in geometric

ratio. Nor ecu we foresee an.v time at which this growth came to an end. it is not like the tower ni Babel, erected as a monument of arrogance and vanity, and brought to destruction h.v the strife of tongues. Euless the scientific worker approach his task with humility and sell-abnegation the brick lie would contribute to (lie great edifice of science crumbles away even before it is in position.”