NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 195, 31 May 1938, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

OLD STYLE AND NEW. Writing of changes in modern lifs and habits, Mr Harold Nicolson says: —“The chief 'changes are in pace. The extraordinary thing is that in some parts of the world you can recapture the old pace. I did it in Persia. There they travel as they did in 1500. One moves about with one’s own servants, possessions and furniture. Personally I prefer modern life, for the Persian caravan type of journey means lots of boredom and fatigue. I prefer the ship and train method which we have just lived through. To my ipind this is she ideal way of travelling, giving the intimacy of the old way, without its exhaustion and great expenditure of time. And then there’s the new system—flying. I have flown from the Equac.or to Southampton, passing over Tropical Africa, the Sudan, Valley, the Aegean Islands, Athens, Ithaca, the Adriatic, the Abruzzi, Naples, Pome, Corsica, and the whole of France. Foi all the interest or beauty of that journey, I might have been flying over Ilfracombe. For purposes of tra ci, 1 prefer the worm’s eye view to the bird’s eye. It may be al wonderful thing to be able to say that one has flown from Brindisi to Southampton in a single day; but all the charm of travel lies in unfamiliar detail. Without that, travel is nothing but locomotion.”

BRITISH AND GERMAN ARMS. During the last few years Mr Winston Churchill has devoted much of his attention to Germany’s military expenditure and once again in the House of Commons he has detailed what lie considers to he the latest information. He said:— “About £280,000,000 has been spent on defence services in Britain in the last financial year, and we arc now asking for £350,000,000 in 1038. These figures are rightly judged enormous, but they acquire their s'gnifieanee only in relation to what is being spent elsewhere. £350,000,000 for 1938 compares with at least £900,000,000 in Germany and it must be remembered that for the last three years in succession German defence expenditure has been running at about that level.“ After giving figures for army and navy expenditure, Mr Churchill deduces that £240,000,000 is available for the air force and continues: “Our comparable British figures are somewhat over £100,000,000. It would therefore not surprise me at all if Germany were going to spend in 1938 more than twice as much upon her air force as Britain, and it must be remembered that this expenditure follows upon several years of even much larger preponderance of German expenditure upon the air compared with British air expenditure.