ENGLISH TOPICS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20543, 11 May 1932, Page 9

ENGLISH TOPICS.

! ECONOMIC SMS. JVERTISING. IRMSSPOHDBKT.) )ON, March 31. i, at the annual Chamber of Comi the top of the ipping, insurance, e are ahead of r, after struggling lifficulty, we have Btor and character our success and iritain has found 1. Our turn and Let us make the lers help, as I beNational Govern- ' for international hat to those who eal destiny—they rhelming success. we wondered if 'the bank—to-day nkfl are the safest t their money, the increase. We idling. The Press at force rn adnever paid better to tell the world Mr Eamaay Macnew headquarters Building Society, es is well spent. i upon everybody lot merely mean are. It means cutjcnditure, expenafford; cutting when your inreduced and cept by debt and a spend ought to but courageously, i policy of irraY, while believing ty, be doing the i.evil by adopting irotecting capital, incsslike method t the disposal of ■ fructify, s together to use such a way that tent and laid up mploy our wealth t the community ts of the labour lot only of their t the generations i Problem. as, opening Manheadquarters or rropical Medicine tuate the memory m, the father of obstacles to the il countries is not ondittons. but the ovalent in them, possessions and which provide an ire in the tropical refore, become a ia country, and Empire, and it is [though these dis-

cases are still prevalent iu those tropical countries, yet a very great deal of progress and improvement has been made in the last 30 years. This improvement is due to the discoveries made by our pioneer investigators who devoted their lives to the study of tropical diseases and medicine on the spot, revealing the cause of many unknown diseases, and. what is still more important, the "way in which they are spread, and the remedies for their successful treatment. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of these discoveries which have saved tho lives of hundreds of thousands of those whose lot it has been to live in tropical lands, not only Europeans, but also the native population. Patrick Manson was not only a brilliant scientific investigator, but it was ho who, with the help, of Mr Joseph Chamberlain, that far-sighted statesman. founded the School of Tropical Medicino inA London. Conditions in the tropical countries are changing, and one of the most striking changes during the last 10 years has been the improvement in communications. Improved communications, unless precautions are taken, will tend to increase the spread of diseaso in the tropics, but those same communications on the other hand will increase the facilities for the control of disease. How can that be done? First of all, T think, by making possible the rapid collection of pathological material for investigation, and, secondly, by allowing a centralised research and dispatch to help other centres in the investigation and control of epidemics. In this house those who have Tnade discoveries and those who have gained great experience in tropical lands will be able to pool their opinions for the help of those who will have to face those problems in the future. Sir Austen Chamberlain recalled the horror with which his father, in his early days at the Colonial Office, learned how heavy was the toll of life taken by tropical diseases among the young men whom it was his duty to appoint to the Colonial Service. In 1896 tho average death-rate was 100 per 1000 a year in British tropical possessions. Today it was pnly between eight- and nine per 1000. '. "Things That Are Really Good." The Archbishop of York, at the annual conference of the Workers' Educational Association at York: Part of the tragedy of modern life is that we spend more and" more time thinking about and working for those things which are only means to something else. The things that are really good, apart from personal relationships, are the enjoyment of knowledge and the appreciation of beauty and the like. The making of life more and more elaborate —the enabling of people to travel on earth or water or in the air 10 miles an hour faster than anybody ever did before —may be turned to good, but in itself it has no good in it. These are all means to ends, and the whole of the great apparatus of industrial production is nothing but a means to an end.The end is in the consumption. The W.E.A.-was primarily a missionary flame, which went forth to consume ignorance wherever it might find it, and particularly to consume the prejudice which had its roots in ignorance and was ignorance's chief protection. What a man does with his leisure is really the most important thing about him. I believe the absence of equality of educational opportunity to be far the greatest and deepest of the injustices of modern life. It can only be cured in so far as the whole community comes to believe and take steps accordingly. The Association, which is approaching its thirtieth birthday, has grown from a tiny band of pioneers to a' national

movement with 507 branches and some 53,000 students. Plea for Music. Lady Snowden, at.Trinity College of prize distribution:— The widespread neglect and disregard for music shown by all those in high places in this country is deplorable. This is the only great civilised country which has no Ministry of Fine Arts. The Government in this country has not, until the last year or two, done anything to subsidise this great art, though it has purchased an infinite number of fine pictures for our benefit. Music is still regarded as a luxury and not as a necessity. In my judgment it is not a luxury, but a necessity of our being. The introduction of mechanical music has had something to do with the distress of musicians. The cinemas are dispensing with their music aud giving us the artificial thing, Another reason for the distress is that music is overtaxed in this country. Among other things, I am interested in opera, and I would like to tell you that in the last two years the State has taken from the Covent Garden Opera Company £23,000 and £25,000 respectively in the form of. taxation. That falls .very heavily upon musical enterprise of all kinds.