TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4741, 3 September 1935, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Social Welfare. “There is no doubt that health and unemployment insurance and public health expenditure have greatly assisted toward improving the standard of living of the poorest classes. But the employed classes as a whole have themselves borne a substantial part of the cost of these and similar services, both directly through their weekly insurance contributions, and indirectly through higher local rates and through their share of the burden

of higher indirect taxation Our relatively calm passage through a period of intense world depression was primarily due to our acceptance of the principle which underlies governmental social service expenditure and the existence of the necessary machinei’y for its administration. Other nations, notably the United States, Germany and Swede'n, have spent heavily on relief, as well as on emergency works. The principles of national health and unemployment insurance are now finding wide acceptance, but no other nation, it may fairly be claimed, has either such a comprehensive or such a generous system of public social services as ours.”—A writer in the “Westminster Bank Review.”

A Religion of the Air. “Speed, which is continually increasing, will bring the nations closer together in mutual understanding and friendship, and will facilitate the rapid exchange of both, material goods and ideals—therefore, international agreements becomes more and more essential,” writes Prince Bibesco, president of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, in the book which Mr. Nigel Tange has edited, “The Air is Our Concern.” “My conviction is that a new religion of the air must be founded which will give to flying-men a higher moral standard, pledging them to use for noble, useful and pacific ends, the admirable instrument created by human genius. It is this new spirit which gives us hope and courage to look forward to a future in which man must .choose between a life founded on the highest principles or the total destruction of the civilised world. Aviation, organised for peace is the only efficient means of employing the strength of humanity for the protection of humanity.”