PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 23 July 1931, Page 2

PUBLIC OPINION

WORD COINERS. “We see by the papers that Mrs Gifford Pinchot has coined the word ‘radiorator’ in a recent speech. We’d like to strike off a few coins in the same series: ‘Radioful,’ for instance, 'and ‘radiorrible,’ And why not ‘radiordchid’ for exotic flow r ers of speech?” —New York Onlooker.” THE QUEST IN THE BLUE. “But most fascinating of all the phenomena which Piccard and Kipfer sent out to investigate is that of the cosmic ray—those strange rays which are continually piercing us and everything around us through and through, but of which we are all unconscious, of whose very existence we have only known (for a few years. These cosmic rays are certainly something fundamental in the structure of our universe. They can best be studied at great heights above the earth. Piccard and Kipfer went daring’,v into the great , spaces in quest of knowledge of the very stuff of being, of the very bases of the world. Others will follow where they have led until the -secrets of the a. ! r have been fully probed. It must ever be so while man remains man, consumed by the mionfetmhable lust- to know.”—“Daily Herald, H

HOARDED GOLD. “The hoarding of the precious meUil in Washington and Paris is not ih itself the cause of the depression. It is merely a symptom, and it can be cured only by the resumption of foreign lending on the part of France and the United States, which would in itself go a long way to revive the languishing consumption of the capital importing countries. But no general revival can be expected until fundamental obstacles to international trade are removed. What is really needed is not geperal inflation, but ;the demohi)Nation of excessive tariffs and the scaling down of war debts to a reasonable level, and, above all, the abandonment of the attempt on the part of producers to circumvent the inevitable laws of supply and demand. There is no short cut to world prosperity by the path of monetary manipulation.”— Professor Gustav Cassel, the wellknown economist, at the Institute of Bankers.

“LET SLEEPING DOGMAS LIE.” “There are some' I know who are disposed to say, ‘Let sleeping dogmas lie,; It is.no exaggeration to say that that is precisely what sleeping dogmas tend to do. It is well within the mark to ;-say that‘if they sleep a long time, for a few centuries perhaps, they lose the virtue they once had of being able to give expression to the truth.’’—The Rev. Professor A. M. Macaulay, PROTECTION AND THE -AVERAGE MAN.

“There is no doubt that for the average man Protection has lost many of its' terrors. .He recognises that Free Trade theory presupposed a wide degree of elasticity in our internal economic system, whereas since the war that system has been the most rigid in 'the world. The theory demanded also that no obstacle should be placed in the way of movements in prices as a result of international movements of -tolcl, whereas ,in recent years gold has been allowed no such freedom of. action. .}gain, the average man sees the protective tariffs of o‘her nations not ’’.elaxed but’ strengthened and his own power of bargaining made illusory. He has had some acquaintance with protective duties in recent years and has observed little evidence of inconvenience or exploitation. His view that the replacement of foreign manufactured goods by products of British industry must tend to relieve unemployment is an instinctive belief rather than a reasoned conviction-’’—“The Round Table." TWO KINDS OF RICH,

“We owe the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University to that private munificence which has been the nurse of all culture and education from the ealiest times. We are so accustomed to see Oxford and Cambridge and to think they have always been there—that they must have dropped from the sky. No State nurse niad they. They owed their endowments to the piety and faith of former generations. Today we celebrate with thankful hearts the most recent and not the least generous of these great bequests in the true tradition of the history of Western civilisation. The rich are divided into two families. There are those who think only how they may heap the largest pile together before they die so that the- State may take half of it,” he added, “and there are those who regard their wealth as a privilege and responsibility, and whose greatest pleasure—and there is none greater—is to look round and consider how they may lay out their wealth for the benefit of their fellowmen land posterity.”—Mr Stanley Baldwin, as Ohanoellor of the IJnivflr. sity, when opening the beautiful Oourtauld Galleries of the Fitzwilliam Museum r.t Cambridge University.