NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 150, 19 March 1924, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

A telephone message from the south polar regions causes one to pause and reflect upon the marvels and possibilities of wireless. A wireless telephone call over 1400 miles is no new thing—calls-' over much greater distances are made every day in these amazing times. It is when one realises that the man who is talking at the other end is away down in the Antarctic ice that the imagination is kindled and impressed. Had Scott, or Shackleton, waited for wireless, what a different story might have been written of their immortal efforts 1 One may imagine Scott, receding farther and farther away from his polar base, maintaining daily communication with his friends and the outside world by wireless relay stations. The greatest danger of exploring unknown regions—complete isolation from the outside world through lack of communications—should gradually disappear with the further development of wireless.

A warning conveyed to dissatisfied elements in the Australian Nationalist Party by the Sydney Horninr; Tieraid, is not without significance for certain rural interests in New Zealand who are seeking to embarrass the existing political situation in order to further their own special claims. "There never has been, and there never can be,” comments the Tieraid, "a real cleavage between city and country interests. In a state of society such as is now necessary to the average civilised being they are essential to each other, and the one not more so than the other. The countryman can consume but a very small proportion of his own production. He needs markets for the rest, and sources of supply for his great range of requirements beyond what he provides for himself. Disregard for these facts argues either a blunted intelligence or a willingness to slip back to primitive conditions that is unthinkable. Country and city have a common cause to advance in politics—the cause of protecting the economic foundations (laid through ages of experience) on which has been built the greatness of the greatest of all civilisations which, we now enjoy.” A general recognition of the fact that modern society consists of a number of mutually interdependent classes, that the good of the one makes for the good of the other, that each, in fact, is necessary to the other, is essential if wc are to have political and economic stability based upon sound government. It is impossible for any particular class elected to power by pure self-interest, to legislate for its own special constituency without disturbing the equilibrium of society. The marvel is that some people cannot be induced to see that.

Daily thrills continue to arrive per Press cablegrams from Wash ington, U.S.A. Not content with issuing sensational bulletins concerning the developments in the Senate Committee’s investigation of the oil scandals, Washington, in the person of Representative TinkHAM, has announced that the number of murders in that city exceeded by 2000 per cent, the number in London, a city with sixteen times the population. We are further informed that Washington had in that year 300 per cent, more drunkards than were to be found in the most wicked city of fiction —Paris —and that crime was increasing at a greater rate than the population. A good deal of this may be set down to the clamour of a politician lusting for notoriety, but one is interested in Mr. Tinkham’s statements, not so much on the ground of their sensational quality as for the causes he assigns for this eruption of social depravity in the capital city of the United States. The chief of these, he declares, arc “the entry of the Church Into politics and the loss of popular respect for the present Congresses and laws which they pass, ruthlessly destroying the rights of individuals and property.” It is a fact that restrictive legislation is invariably followed by attempts to evade it. An Act of Parliament will automatically convert a perfectly innocent and legitimate proceeding into an offence, as, for example, when a man buys a packet of cigarettes in Wellington after seven o’clock and incidentally commits a breach of the shopping laws. Taking that man by and large he is morally speaking no worse a citizen than he was before these restrict laws were enacted, except that his respect for the law.has perceptibly declined, along with that of the. shopkeeper’s. America, largely through the efforts of a clamorous and well-organised minority, is peculiarly subject to restrictive legislation, and it is possibly because these laws are so little respected and so easily evaded that the remainder of the population says.nothing by way of protest against them. All of which is extremely bad for the morale of the nation.