NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 38, 24 November 1938, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PHYSICAL FITNESS. Something like a passion for physical health has seized the men and women of Britain in all classes, writes Miss Mary Agnes Hamilton in the “Listener.” It carries with it a strong and general desire to be as nice looking as one’s efforts can compass. It has produced a vast new literature; it is producing a new and more cheerful race. It is revolutionising clothes to-day freer and more sensible than ever before; it is opening windows—and not material windows only. All sorts of false reticences and unreal shames are being swept out by its powerful wind. Men and women are discovering a new kind of companionship jn the freedom of exercise and games done together; the spectre of premature old age is .being exorcised for both sexes and all classes.

PLANET AS ECONOMIC UNIT. There are two ways of solving a surfeited market, says the “Man in the Moon,” writing in the “Christian Science Monitor,” on so-called over-pro-duction. One is the fearful way of restriction of goods. The other is finding new sources to supply. If your world were under one human government, you 'might successfully legislate restriction of-production, or rather curtailment of the amount of acreage to be engaged in raising a. certain product. As it is, however, a decreased American crop is temptation for a greater production elsewhere, and giving away foreign markets is not a road to farming prosperity in these days. Except as a temporary measure to relieve fear and local markets, therefore, the restriction of goods as an economic solution must come through intelligent regard of the requirements of supply—the regulation that you people have termed the law of demand and supply. To foster wise farming, government, can well provide crop and market information and finance storage for the loan years of unfavourable weather. But the greatest deficiency of vision in lauds now bewailing over-production is the failure to appreciate the natural law of supply on your planetary home. In nationalistic policies of limitation and isolation, your groups of people are attempting to bar the roads of supply Your planet has a surface woven of various soils, climes, cultures, and opportunities. If a section is walled or torn away from this covering, there occurs a maladjustment that affects the welfare of all your peoples adversely. You folks of earth should think in planetary terms instead of those of selfish nationalism.