TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY

After. Professor Murphy had addressed the Society of Accountants on "Principles of Public Expenditure" it was proposed by one of those present that ' the professor should enter Parliament. "There are two reasons why I would not become a member of Parliament," said Professor Murphy, in reply. "First, because I don't want to; and, second, because I should not get my deposit back." It is regrettable that these reasons are sufficient to deter many experienced economists from offering their services to Parliament. [They see the Legislature acting often with slight consideration of the principles of political economy, and they consider that their voices would be raised in vain in protest. Therefore, they do not seek the honour. Also, they know that the electorate is, to say the least, uncertain in its judgment. It may prefer a smoothtongued prophet to one who will counsel such unpleasant things as hard work, thrift, and economy. Strange as it may seem, a worthy candidate is not certain of election. But are we to accept such a state of affairs, and be content with a. Legislature notoriously weak in its capacity .for financial criticism? We may resign ourselves to some kind of Oriental fatalism, and say: "It is awful, but it is the will of Allah." But it would be better if we made an effort towards improvement. University professors may be excused from offering themselves as sacrifices; but there are other members of the community who have, not equal right to exemption. There are economists with practical knowledge of business affairs and business men who have studied the principles of political economy. If some such would lead the way it might be difficult at first, but ultimately the electors would learn to distinguish between sound judgment and the superficial talk which is heard so much in the Parliamentary session.

Citizens who are expected to observe the bylaws have for many years complained that they are under a handicap through inability to learn what these bylaws are. They have been so much altered and amended that the layman must often be in doubt as to what may be required of him. Of

course, statute law is often as difficult to understand, but the difficulty is lessened by regular annotation, and by the practice followed by Parliament for several years, of consolidating the law on various questions. Consolidation of the municipal bylaws is much needed, and we would suggest that if a complete consolidation cannot be quickly undertaken the work should be dealt with in sections —traffic, building, and so on. There is one compensation for the delay in the assurance that interested bodies are being consulted.' We have urged for some time past that architects, for example, should be invited to assist in revising the building bylaws and bringing them into line with modern practice. This, according to the City Engineer, is being done now, so that w.hen the revision is finally made the bylaws should be acceptable and fully enforceable.

In a quite casual way, a Berlin cablegram in last night's issue mentions that a former German Prince, dethroned in the post-war liquidation, was "compensated by the Republic for the loss of his sovereign rights" in inflated paper money. The ex-sovereign did not receive gold sovereigns, nor even gold marks, but paper v marks, and "the sum quickly vanished." The actual purchasing value of the paper money at the time when it was paid in extinction of sovereign rights (a grim joke in itself!) is not stated,'but it could have been very small. According to fre-quently-published statements, it did not need any princely extravagance to dissipate such . paper payments, and the impoverishment of the German small investor by the same process is frequently referred to by economic writers as one of the incidents of a lost war. Possibly it will one day come to be viewed as something much more revolutionary than the German revolution itself. Certainly, if other distressful debtors conceived the idea of paying their debts, at home and abroad, with unlimited paper, the matter would become more than a nine days' wonder. While the case referred to in the cablegram—that of the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg—might be a theme for a W. S. Gilbert, the principle behind it will claim the increasing attention of the ,heavy historian. But the history of German post-war finance 'is still incomplete. The present generation of outside observers seems to be still hardly able to separate camouflage from reality.

A bishop and a' doctor each occupied, separately, some of the space in yesterdayjs issue, in an attempt to solve the problem of the child. There is not dnly a new woman, but a new girl and a new boy, the girl and the, boy being "the war baby and air raid baby" of 1914-18. The bishop sees in these the awkward, temperamental results of their beginnings, in that "such children become over-active, restless, and distractable. They are eager to tackle problems without pre-vision or judgment. In short, they suffer from precocity and lack of balance. But Dr. Reaney, in an address to nurses and health students, finds similar peculiarities in the new child, and correlates them not with the Great War but with other factors associated with the peace (but not peaceful) side of modern civilisation. He does not believe in the cinema for young children, and thinks that "the great danger of the present time is over-stimulation of the emotions of the very young." Again, "the. clumsy person springs from the child who by some means has been thwarted in its early experimental years"—as, for instance, by being protected from those escapades and falls that would have cured clumsiness. It is a little difficult to,see where the war psychosis diagnosis ends and where the bad training diagnosis begins. The observations of the bishop and the doctor seem to indicate that the child is something of a complex. But that much was known before.