OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 292, 5 September 1931, Page 22

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

The Man Below Deek. “Perhaps do one on earth, or on the sea, enjoys so. precarious a bold on the attention of the public as the marine engineer. His vague figure fluctuates between an occasional flash of glory and a comfortable obscurity, writes Mr, William McFee in an interesting contribution in the "London Mercury on "Engine-Room Staff." His psychology is never a subject of debate because, if the public thinks about him at all, it does so In terms of newspaper headlines, or as a mysterious being seen during an ocean voyage, far down in the shining bowels of the ship, clinging to'perllous ladders and doing enigmatic things to complicated mechanisms in congested corners of an unbearably hot engine-room.” The ‘1914 of Economics.”

We say that with France if it may be, but without France- if it must be, action is imperative to ensure the financial and political stability of Germany. For we repeat that a German crash would threaten nothing less than “the 1914 of economics.’’ Why? Panic and peril and all the usual causes of revolution would extend to some neighbouring countries; no country whatever, and assuredly not Britain, would remain unaffected; the usual mechanism of interntlonal banking would be dislocated almost as rudely as by war itself; the hope of trade-recovery would be thrown back throughout the world; the continuance of low prices and bad times would inflame agitation in every quarter of the globe.—Mr. J. G. Garvin. Adventures Among Books. , r

“In this business of the choice of books I am with the Earl of Balfour when be confesses that at times he is tempted somewhat to vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask whether Heaven has not reserved in pity to this much educating generation, some peaceful desert of literature as yet unclaimed by the crammer or the coach; where it might be possible for the student to wander, even perhaps to stray, at bls own pleasure; without finding every beauty,'labelled, every difficulty engineered, every nook surveyed, and a professional cicerone standing at every corner to guide each succeeding traveller along the same well-worn round. I will not quarrel with those who think otherwise. They can do.no harm* and catalogues of what one ought to read are an entertainment and a warning. Every reader .worth his salt will choose his own hundred best books. A library, whether, small or large, is a sea which we’ must chart for ourselves and explore . for ourselves, our own intelligence for compass.”—Mr. Holbrook Jackson. . 'fife-Utility of Sacrifice.

«The D'uce is a man determined-to carry out his initiatives. The Hoover proposal brought a relaxation in the tension of public opinion and created,, ah atmosphere of good-will that it is necessary to direct now toward disarmament. It is useless to create Illusions. tJirtil there is disarmament, peace will be insecure. Sacrifices cannot be asked from peoples if they do not clearly see their utility. The creditor peoples have the right'to ask if their sacrifices are destined to increase that state of insecurity which is most damaging to general economic recovery. On the other hand, the budgets, deprived of extraordinary receipts of war payment, must find compensation; that can only be found' in economies in military expenditure.”—Signor Grand!, • Italian Foreign Minister. A Tariff For Britain.

“Once the principles, of "the tariff have been enacted by Parliament it must be made knave-proof. All questions of detail will go to a commission, judicial in its functions, and therefore to be made judicial in composition and method?- On its reports, and not on interested representations, Parliament will finally decide. We say without hesitation that this policy will enable the tariff to be used, as it is intended to be used, as an Instrument of national welfare. The principle of the tariff is of necessity political. But the tariff itself must be kept out of - politics, and on Mr. Baldwin’s programme out of politics it will go. His plan of an emergency measure passed on a national mandate and amended in detail by an authoritative and Impartial body wilt give us such a tariff as ‘The Observer’ has worked for these many years—sueh a tariff as we had hoped that Labour, with its strong social.conscience, would have had the insight and the courage to establish.” —“Observer” (-London). Starving and Plenty.

“We find ourselves to-day in all material things immensely rich, but we are all poor. We suffer, not because we have too little to drink, or eat, or wear, or because the goods are dear, but because our warehouses are stuffed with cheap goods that no one will buy, and our harbours congested with ships that no one will charter,

and our men here, there, and everywhere are out of work. .Something _ has slipped out of.gear in the intricate machinery of this simple, civilised life. There is scarcely a trade or commodity in which rival jiations are not competing to secure business for their own producers by restricting the sales of other nationals. In the race to get rich did .we not forget that to make business some one must buy and be able to pay; that trade is barter; that, this simple civilised life of ours is only- possible because' each of us is willing not alone to be employed but to employ, not only to pay debts but to receive payment, and that the trade of nations is ruled by the same law?” —Sir Alan Anderson, of the Bank of England.

The Indian Native Congress. “The tactics pursued by Congress since the signing of the Delhi agreement have not inspired confidence in the people as a whole,” declared Dr. Shafaat Ahmed Khan. “There is no more nationalism in India at the present day,” he said, “than there is democracy in the Congress councils. Is it not clear that Congress has tried to enforce its Ukase with complete disregard for the feelings of the minority, thus producing disastrous results? The Moslem community is completely alienated from the policy and methods of Congress. The chief feature of Congress politics is a curious combination of Communism and commuuialism. The doctrines of Communism are openly and enthusiastically preached to peasants by thousands of Congress jvohwtMxa.”

Does University Education Pay? "If the average boy went to a university, would he gain more in terms of general intellectual equipment, n outlook, poise, and power of leadership than he might lose in seniority in his business, or by some postponement of the time of his learning the technique of his profession? In a majority of cases I am inclined to think that the appropriate answer to the question is that the young man would seem in the earlier stages of his business career to have forfeited something of-profes-sional advantage by the fact of ms having taken a university course, but this handicap—assuming the man meant business and had in him the roots of the matter-r-would be eliminated by about the age of 30, and by the middle thirties and onward to the peak of the earning life, the university of experience would prove an Important and, in many cases, a decisive advantage.”—The Marquess of Linlithgow. Economic Errors of Government. “The risks of a period of stagnation are normal risks connected with any business activity. The normal character of these risks and difficulties enables us to draw one general conclusion, namely, that it will be wise to face them with the normal means of economic activity and not to ask that political manoeuvres be brought to the support of private interests, however, deserving these may be. Protectionism, whether direct or indirect, in which the respective Governments are now eagerly engaged, with good intentions perhaps, but often sacrificing future welfare to considerations of Immediate Interest, prevents producers from considering their wishes in the light of reality and from assuming their share of responsibilities. Government intervention to fix the price of certain agricultural commodities is, in my judgment, an error which is hardly excusable; for experience has proved that such intervention can only prolong the crisis, and that these stocks, purchased at very high prices, prove very expensive to the taxpayer.”—M. Georges Theunis, Belgium. , The Real Sufferers.

‘"The classes who have suffered by the fall are the shareholding class in general, the entrepreneurs (captains of industry) and those thrown out of employment; they have suffered partly by a direct reduction in the national income, partly by . the transfer of wealth from them to the rentier and the employed. If an adjustment is brought about by a rise in prices, purchasing power will be transferred from the rentier and from those earning salaries and wages to the shareholder and entrepreneur in the shape of larger profits; though if, as a result of,the adjustments, the national output is increased, the salaried and wage-earn-ing class as a whole may easily gain more In increased employment than they lose in the purchasing power of their money earnings.”—From the Macmillan Report. The Insufficiency of Science.

"In spite of all its sufficiency science is only sufficient for itself. It is. not sufficient for the whole of life. After all, as has been recently said, the greatest factor in science is neither facts nor theories nor methods, but the scientist. And the greatest factors in an age of science are the people who live in that age. The very progress of science depends not so much upon the logical prosecution of the scientific method, as on the quality of the men who prosecute the (research. Science demands a certain quality beyond its own giving in the men who will be its devotees, and the fact of science in the world at all demands in us qualities beyond what itself can produce. The great question is, therefore, whether, in a world of modern science, we can produce men of the right quality to handle the facts in the midst of which they live, and to use for worthy purposes the material which science places ready to their hands.”- —Dr. Lee Woolf, Professor of New College.

A Golden Vision. “There have been regions and periods in which impoverishment was due to scarcity, to .an inadequacy of natural resources or of man’s power to utilise them, and the time may yet come in future centuries when the increased population of the world will press hard upon its available resources, and when diminished standards. and ultimate starvation will be an unescapable necessity for its surplus mouths. Happily any such fate is distant, if not doubtful. But ours is a problem of the impoverishment that comes from plenty. And this, however difficult, is in its nature capable of solution and offers the richest prizes if we can solve it. If only we can so refashion our system as to use fully our capacity to bring again into useful work those who now stand idle and ask for nothing better than to be usefully employed, there will be such a leap forward in prosperity as the worlil has never seen, with results' beyond all estimate or Imagination in terms of human happiness and welfare.”—Sir Arthur Salter, of the League of Nations.

If Newton Had Not Lived. “One of the greatest figures—perhaps the greatest figure—in English history, was Isaac Newton. Therefore the history book that tells us about the husband of Queen Anne, aud not about Newton, is not only laying a wrong emphasis on fact, but is simply misrepresenting them. It Is as though one were to say England is Inhabited by coloured people, whereas there are, perhaps, ten thousand coloured people in the country, compared with a population of forty-million whites. The emphasis would be so wrong as to make the statement false. After all, England is not so much the product of contests between Normans and Saxons, Yorkists and Lancastrians, Parliamentarians and Royalists, Whigs and Tories, ns it Is the product of the knowledge and skill that have been elicited by the great scientific movements of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It does not matter much to us now whether the Tories or the Whigs were in power in 1710, but the fate of our country and the fate of our people would have been very different if the sickly infant Newton hnd died as was expected by his nurse the day after his birth on December 25, 1642.—Dr. Charles Singer, president of the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology,