NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 36, 22 November 1937, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PROBLEMS OF NUTRITION. The conclusions of the whole matter are plain and inescapable, says Sir George Newman, writing on nutrition in the “London Observer.” The food which people eat, and on which their standards of life and health depend, is their own affair. It cannot, as is often suggested,, be prescribed by the State; nor could such prescription be complied with. Every person’s taste is individual; his body has its own idiosyncrasies ; his freedom of choice is inviolate. But the State has a direct responsibilty both to educate its people and to facilitate their obtaining a sufficiency of the right foods. Poverty and ignorance are the twin evils; and they are increased and embittered by any avoidable disparity between food prices and domestic income. THE TOLERANT ENGLISH. t The average Englishman likes a house of his own, a bit in the Post Office, and a yard or two of garden; he also enjoys tea, tobacco, football, a wireless set, and a seat at the pictures, writes Mr Ivor Brown, the dramatic critic, in the “Manchester Guardian.” After that come the activities and aspirations of the exceptional people, devotees of an artistic cult or zealots of an ethical cause. These he is prepared to tolerate, provided they do not try him too far. After all, he is not bothering with them. It is a lazy attitude but it brings with it a certain and a blessed amount of freedom. The voice of the people is not, as a rule, a voice at all. The mass does not take the initiative, hut when spoken to repeatedly and loudly it does make some response. As to arts, books, plays, education and so forth, we get no cold denial as we get no warm encouragement. The answer is a species of permissive grunt, the companion of a nod. So the enthusiasts for the good, the true, the beautiful can go on working. Under the British type of democracy they will get little encouragement and almost no money. But they have—which is much in a world such as ours—the liberty to pursue a labour of love. If they are not in clover, at least they are not—as they would be almost everywhere from the Rhine to the Pacific—in the graveyard or the gaol.