NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 October 1928, Page 7

NEWS AND NOTES.

A SPECTRE AHEAD. “There is no longer much doubt that Hie Winter ahead of us will be one oi Ino gloomiest on record. The sun has shone during the summer, but not on industry. Since the end of May unem ployment figures have been increasing by 20,000 a week, and now stand at the alarming total, of 1,300,000, which is not Very far short of a quarter of a million more than at this time last tear. Unemployment normally increases during tiie winter, so that the country will lie faced with a far from roseate prospect in the coming months. When Parliament meets again other subjects will be dwarfed beside this dominant issue. More and more as the election approaches it will occupy the attention of the. nation.”—“ Sunday Times.”

THE INVASION OF THE MACHINE. “ There is a machine in use in America which fillets fish of all sizes with a degree of accuracy and a rate of speed that human labour can never approach. These remarkable machines are little known outside the limited circle immediately interested, but already they are exerting important influences. To take a case in point: year after year Norwegian workers were brought to Scotland to carry out certain work in connection with the fishing industry. Their annual visits have ceased because their work is being carried out by one off these new machines, with its almost uncanny ability to do its own thinking.”—The Et. Hon. C. A. McCurdy, in the “ Daily News.”.

PUBLIC HEALTH MUST BE ORGANISED. “No amount of commonsense on the part of the individual will free his ai; from smoke, his milk from tuberculosis, or his house from vermin, unless there is concerted effort on the part of the local authority,. which must secure legislation that will be tolerated and guided by public opinion.”—Fran “ Health Services and the Public,” by Stella Churchill, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., D.P.H., L.G.C.

IF CHURCH UNION COMES. “The union of the Churches is impending,” said Mr G. H. Fraser, librarian of Aberdeen, at a meeting of the Scottish Library Association, “and if that union means anything it means that several hundred, at least, of church buildings in rural parishes will be set free for other purposes. It would be impossible, I think, to name a purpose more admirable than county library, women’s institute, and general recreative uses to which these church buildings could be turned, and it is at least significant that they promise to be available just at the time when our county library schemes are coming into use, and are so full of the prospect of real advantage to the rural life of Scotland.”

THE WONDER OF WORDS. “Language, the use of words, their derivation and structure, their history and meaning and divers applications through the centuries, seems to me to be, perhaps, the most interesting study in the world,” writes Miss Rose Macaulay in the “Daily Herald.” The most readable book in English is, I think, the 1 Oxford Dictionary,’ with its 12 enormous and too-weighty volumes, its many pages devoted to tracking one word from its birth through its early development and current uses, with illustrative quotations from all periods 'for each use. Yet even this dictionary does not, of course, get anywhere near exhausting the subject of words. Language is so fluid, so like an ever-rolling stream that bears its words along, slipping out of sight and hearing even while we watch, that books should be written about it all the time, catching it, so to speak, at each ripple of -the stream. There is room for a long pamphlet about every word.”

UNITED STATES EXPERT'S TRIBUTE. In the “Atlantic Monthly” Mr. GeorgeW. Alger, a well-known authority on American law, writes:—“ England trusts her magistrates. Site selects them carefully, gives them wide powers, and expects them to perform their duties in the maintenance of the dignity of English justice They have met these expectations Here in America power in criminal law is mainly vested in the amateur rather than the expert. We trust our juries, hut we do not trust our courts To prevent bad judges, chosen for political reasons only, from doing wrong, we have by a patchwork df prohibitions made it impossible lor good judges to act effectively.

ON MODERN LIFE. Sir Hugh Alien, Director of the Royal College of Music, presiding at New College Oxford, seventh summer course in music teaching said, “the human machine nowadays runs so fast that it is difficult to know how to stop it, and the consequence is we feel we have to keep going, or else there Will he some disaster. Rut sooner or later if we go on at this rate,, there will be

a catastrophe. We are not making any greater headway through it, for we are so engrossed with speed that wo cannot stop to think and cannot get down to bedrock. We are all like the present-day motorists, who do 100 miles in no time, and then waste time at the other end talking about the terrific speed they got up and the number of narrow shaves they had. But the motorists sees less in his 100 mile than in these days of short cuts. Short cuts are invariably a long way round in the end, and usually end in disaster, particularly where education is concerned.”

LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP. “Disinterested thought—thought that is ,which is directed towards an ideal object, whether the attainment of intellectual truth in some domain or the intellectual analysis of some practical issue—is the very life-blood of a civilised community. The wisdom of mankind has long since concluded that the evils resulting from an attempt to stifle it far outweigh any temporary inconvenience which may be caused by its diffusion among immature minds. There is no doubt a frontier, difficult to trace on particular occasions, between the intellectual analysis of a practical issue and the discussion of the action to he taken as a result of such an analysis. This we may readily admit, without entering 'farther into the thicket thus disclosed. All that we would lay down here, as an axiom with which the learned world would be in unanimous agreement, is that disinterested thought, as above defined is indissolubly bound up with the very conception of a civilised society, and that every effort should be made to promote both its exercise and its expression.”—Mr ,Alfred Zfimmern in “Learning and Leadership.”

THE KELLOGG PACT. “Mr Kellogg in fills April address before the American, Society of International Law, carefully stated that the treaty could not be construed -as interfering with the obligations of any nation under the Locarno Pacts or the Covenant of the League of Nations, since a nation breaking any of these agreements would also violate the Kellogg treaty. In such a case all the other nations would be relieved of their obligations to renounce war against the recalcitrant state, and free to carry out League and Locarno promises. Nor does the Kellogg treaty prevent such eventualities as forcible British interference in Egypt or armmed intervention by the United States in Nicaragua. Tt may be said that actions of this kind are not war, but justifiable kteps to protect lives and property. Any intervention, however whether for the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine or the protection of the Suez Canal, or for any other purpose, may lead in time to something approaching a state of war. Over these things the Kellogg treaty has no direct influence.” —American “Independent.”

MISPLACED HERO WORSHIP. “Is not this age of ours careless of intellectual achievements while it gives too much hero worship to motor experts who risk their lives on long-dis-tance flights; to plump ladies who grease their bodies and swim an awfully long way ;to chunk-headed lads who can hit a ball further than most others or give a quick upper-cut to the jowl of a pugilist; or to any tennis champion who calls himself an amateur but devotes the hours of sunlight to a game which was once played more prettily by ladies in bustles, and to record-breakers of all kinds who have some special quality of nerve, or wind, or muscle, or cardiac action ?...That’s the most unpopular question that any writer could ask in- cold print.”—Sir Philip Gibbs, in the “New York Times.”