PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 June 1928, Page 4

PUBLIC OPINION.

A POINT AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL.

“The following people who came late in their families were not only more distinguished than any of tho same family who preceded them, but would also never have seen the light if the birth-controller's rule of four children to each couple had been adopted by their parents (says Mr Anthony Ludovici, in his “Case Against Birth Control”): —Edward Lear, the youngest of twenty-one children; Charles AVesley (eighteenth) ; Sir Thomas Lawrence (six- | teenth); John AA'esley (fifteenth) ; Albert Moore, the painter (fourteenth); .Sir Rochard Arkwright (inventor of cotton-spinning machine), Josiali Wedgwood, and Pierre Prudhon, Famous French artist (thirteenth); Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer (twelfth); Thomas Campbell (poet), Charles Reade (novelist) were eleventh childrei\; Benjamin Franklin (U.S. author and statesman), John Hunter, (physiologist and surgeon), and Coleridge were tenth children ; Sir AA’alter Scott, Archbishop Richard AA’hately, . Gainsborough, Archbishop A. C. Tait, Lord Cromer, Henry Moore (painter), and Granville Sharpe were | ninth sons; Johann Sebastian Bach was an eighth child; and seventh children included Herrick, Mungo Park, Van Dyck, Huxley, Jane Austen, Grace Darling, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; Emily Bronte, Darwin, Da Quinccy. Felicia Dorothea ■ -Remans, Pep.vs, Voltaire, Oliver • Goldsmith, Oliver Cromwell, Sir AValler Besant, Rembrandt. Cecil Rhodes and Horace AA’alpole were fifth children. THE LAAV’,S DELAYS. “Complaints about the delays and costs attendant upon litigation are so widespread that one is driven to inquire whether all is well with our existing judicial system. These complaints have their counterpart in . the equally loud complaints of lawyers that their work is being ruined, because their clients, especially busines men, prefer to .settle their disputes even at the expense of incurring a loss, rather than face the costs and delays of fighting an action. “The situation at least merits inquiry, for no one would wish the stigma of inefficiency to fall upon our Courts. An efficient judiciary is an ideal to he I aimed at by every self-governing community; more especially should it ho the ideal of this country, the reputation of whose Courts has always been so high.”—A correspondent in the “A’orkshire Post.”

PEACE IN OUR TIME. ‘‘There is another disarmament which is not loss important, which is indeed more urgent, for it is a necessary preliminary to the physical disarmament of nations. It is the moral disarmament of. the world. . . Unless we find some method to allay the distrust, to remove the suspicions, to take away those fears which now brood «over not merely Government offices and councils of Ministers, but j the mansions of the rich and the cot- I tages of the poor in the lands which j have been devastated by war. . . wo shall never succeed in achieving the great programme which we have set before ns.”—Sir Austen Chamberlain, in '‘Peace in Our Time.” A GERMAN ON MR BALDWIN. “It may well be asked how he rose to liis present position. Was it a triumph of common sense or a miracle like that of St. Joan? Undoubtedly common sense had it great deal to do with it, but it is evident that, like St. Joan, Baldwin has a mission in which lie firmly believes. Filled with religious fervour, he bears the banner of England aloft, a St. Joan alive to the prevailing tendency cf the Stock Exchange and conscious of what is practicable in England. He is simple, and politically as unsullied as St. Joan. Like her, he walks hand-in-hand, as,it were, with the Almighty, and follows a distant light.”—Dr Rudolf Kircher, in the “Frankfurter Zeitung.”

LORD BIRKENHEAD INVITES WRATH. “Political wisdom has not, I gather, teen justified of its women. Nowhere is it possible td say that a Station has shown a great political advance by tea-

son of tho women’s vote. ■On the contrary, I can call to mind legislation which has largely owed its existence'to its appeal to the woman .voter, bifl which lias proved a prodigious and recognised failure. AA’omen ‘ have not shown themselves especially influential a,t the polls. They tend to vote in accordance with tho views of their husbands. . lii short, the extension of votes to women has made small difference to the world ; it certainly has not in the least justified the Vehement and often violent arguments of the pre-war woman suffragist.”—Lord Birkenhead.