IN THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 297, 12 September 1934, Page 7

IN THE NEWS

The Locarno Treaties

Almost since the formation of the League of Nations In January, 1920, the statesmen of the world have been endeavouring to devise a formula which all nations will accept as a basis for l world peace. One of the schemes, the Locarno Treaties, is mentioned in connection with Poland’s attitude to what is called the Eastern Locarno Pact. A big step forward in ideas for world peace was the Geneva Protocol (1924), which plainly stated that a nation was an aggressor when it refused the alternatives for war. Although not accepted by the nations, the Protocol served to clear up many of the ambiguities in the League of Nations Covenant, which forms part of the Peace Treaty. On October 5, 1025, representatives of Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, and Czechoslovakia met at Locarno, a small town in Switzerland. For the first time since the war Germany became a party to an international undertaking for the maintenance of peace' and was received on a friendly footing With the other nations in a common enterprise.. The several Powers guaranteed to maintain the frontiers between Germany and Belgium, and Germany and France, as provided In the Peace Treaty. Germany and Belgium, and Germany and France, pledged themselves not to attack one another, or to invade one another's ter ritory, or to resort to war against one another. Germany and France, as well as Germany and Belgium, agreed to settle peacefully all questions between 1 them In a case of conflicting rights they promised to submit the matter to. judicial decision and comply with such decision. Also the “demilitarised” zone stretching 50 miles from the right bank of the Rhine was to be maintained, and Germany was not to be allowed jo build forts on the left bank or on the right bank west of the “demilitarised’' zone. In ease of a flagrant aggression, such as actual invasion, the Powers signing promised to come immediately to the aid of the party attacked. The test of aggression is the refusal to accept the decision of courts for legal matters, or conciliation tribunals for other disputes The Arbitration Treaties between Germany and France, Germany and Belgium, ; ; Germany and Poland, and Germany and Czechoslovakia, which form parti of the Locarno settlement, provide that all disputes between those nations which cannot be, settled by the usual methods of diplomacy ‘may be submitted to' an arbitral tribunal or to the Permanent Court of International Justice which has been set up under the League of Nations. The Locarno Treaties apply only to Western Europe. The Eastern, Locarno Pact Is an endeavour to obtain security in the East of Europe in the same way that the effort hds been made in the. West.

Germany and Barter. Germany wants to settle her debts to Lancashire, amounting to £500,000, by a system of barter. That is to say; she wants to go back to an inconvenient method which the Invention of money was specially designed to prevent—the direct exchange of goods for goods. Barter was in vogue when there was no money. A man might want to trade an article for one of a different kind, but the owner of the latter fiilght value his article' higher than the one offered, and so no business might result. Then, too, the owners of different things could not always come together at convenient times and places, so as to have many persons and things in a single market to facilitate exchange. It Is probable, therefore, as soon as people began to trade to any considerable extent, they began to use some wellknown commodity of convenient size and value as a medium of exchange; and thus money and trade originated and developed together. A good example of the beginning of coinage is to be found In the trading operations of the Hudson Bay Company. At first the beaver skin was the common standard of value in the region, but as it was rather awkward for general circulation, wooden or metal tokens were adopted by mutual, consent as representing or equivalent to beaver skins. The trapper having disposed of his skins for these tokens would change them back again to the company for fishhooks, hatchets, rifles, ammunition, or food, or anything else he wanted. Thus the exchange would he completed —goods for goods—the company would have the skins and the trappers would have the things they wanted to get for the skins.—'Things used for money have included cattle, slaves, whales', teeth, soap, furs, salt, tobacco, grain, oil, shells.

Making an Al Nation. Dr. Ada Paterson has drawn attention to nutrition as essential z to public health. Scientists tell us that the children of the near future will be tw<. inches taller on the average; remain children in spirits longer; be longer in maturing and be stronger in body and in mind; will be happier; and will have built Cor themselves defences against disease. They say that st many of the small people of to-day are stunted, not by Nature, but because they have not had proper food. . It is the badly-fed child who is unnaturally and bypersensitlvely precocious. The better-fed child, is invaribly better bal anced. Scientists have proved that the well-fed animal will resist steadily the disease to which an ill-fed animal will succumb readily.

Noise—the Disease of Civilisation. If it does what is claimed for it. the new type of silencer to eliminate the noise from a motor-cycle exhaust, which is reported from England to have passed official teests ■should be a boon and a blessing to men. Noise, which has been defined .as "any unwanted sound." has been called the “disease, of civilisation.” The loss to industry in England from human wastage caused by noise is estimated at £50.000.000 a rear, and London Is said to be fast becoming the noisiest city In the world. In 1928 the British Medi cal Association found that noise caused the hearing tb become Impaired; that it interferes seriously with the efficiency of the worker, lessening attention and making concentration more difficult: that It places.a great strain on the nervous system, interferes with sleep, and" hinders the normal development of Infants and young children Scientists tell us that a man can be come more exhausted through merely sitting in a chair within hearing of loud noises than, by the hardest of manual labour The British Broad-t casting Building In, London is regarded as the finest sound-proof building In the world it Is actually a building within a building The outer building is built on n steel framework, and the Inner constructed solidly of brick, so that there Is no Interchange of noise between the two buildings.