NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 61, 5 December 1930, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

If Great Britain is bringing fewer babies into the world, she is rearing more of them. Interest in reducing infant mortality quickened in the closing years of the War and since then a great deal has been accomplished. It is flattering to New Zealand that in this campaign the Plunket system has been widely quoted and many of its methods followed. The latest figures for England and Wales, which relate to one quarter only, show the death-rate reduced to 45 per 1000 live births which is a better yearly record than any other country in the world could show so late as 1928 with the single exception of - New Zealand whose figure in that year was 39. If England can maintain the present low rate for a full year her achievement will be a very considerable one, especially, when account is taken of the slum conditions into which many babies are born.

Lord Hailsham, in stigmatising Mr. J. H. Thomas’s use of “humbug” as “offensive and unjustified,” recalls that Mr. Philip Snowden described all talk of Imperial preference as “bunkum” It may be hoped that this research for inelegant phrases will not now be conducted by British Labourites as a reprisal. It would be inconvenient if they remembered some of the sayings of Dominions’ delegates. Thus Mr. Forbes described a statement by the British Prime Minister ’in the House of Commons as “mere words,” a politer equivalent of “humbug” or “bunkum.” Worse than that, Mr. Forbes said that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald had “unfairly presented” Imperial Conference matters which comes close to a charge of misrepresentation. Then there was Sir Thomas Wilford’s indiscretion at a Navy League dinner in London in describing as ' “fudge” the opinion expressed by the Prime Minister of Japan on the Singapore Base. It will be better if these verbal skeletons .are not resurrected but left buried in the oblivion to which they belong.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” according to the Pauline definition. For most of us, however, “this is a hard saying,” difficult to comprehend. An easier statement, and a true one, was offered by the Rev. J. R. Blanchard in addressing his congregation, that faith is an anchor “to hold people against the drifting tides of life.” “Youth.” said Mr. Blanchard, “is entering a world that is a baffling world, a world that is a challenging world, a world the prospect of which is very unpromising, and I think youth to-day needs all those steady convictions and inspiring visions which the message of faith alone can give.” There can be no doubt that many have lost their moorings in these times of rapid change, both ideal and material. Much of the world’s discontent is due to men and women having no fixed star to guide them, and therefore no objective. Nor can they find much help in the writers on science or philosophy or ethics who are as undecided as themselves as to the chief end of man. The Church does not hesitate to provide an answer to that age-old question. To quote the opening words of the Shorter Catechism, “man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.” Here is the constant in a world of change, faith the anchor.

Italy is not likely to pass over without protest what seems on the reports to be the invidious distinction made by Australia against Italian immigrants. If the ban had universal application Italy might find it excusable but when, for the time being at least, her nationals are placed in the same class of prohibited immigrants as Asiatics, she is bound to feel the affront to her national pride. The masterful Mussolini, who has been instilling into. his people an assertive national consciousness and upholding Italy’s claim to parity with al! comers, will not easily stomach this repulse on the Commonwealth front. Well may the Australian Acting-Prime Minister prefer to keep silence for, as he says, the ban is a matter of international significance and, anxious as he is “to avoid complications,” it may be hard to steer clear of them. The trouble has its origin, of course, in the Queensland sugarcane fields where Italian planters and labourers are supplanting and dispossessing the Queenslanders. The latter rid themselves of the Kanakas but now are faced with the successful competition of another race which also is more fitted than they to work under the tropic sun. Australia may well ask herself what boots it to pay to the tune of millions annually to protect a crop that is being harvested more and more by Italians. There have been riots and clashes between the Queenslanders and Italians and now comes this ban that is likely to prove even more disturbing to amicable relations .with Italy.