TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 5 February 1936, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

COMING OF AIR AGE. j Mr H. D. Hall, liaison officer for the j Dominions Press at the League of i Nations Secretariat, speaking at SydI ney, said: “We are entering on a period of instability in human, affairs. In spite of all the post-war disturbances, we have become accustomed to more or less stable and ordered progress. That time has passed, and we are now in the air age. Hitherto all policies were based on the fact that oceans were so broad, that continents took so many days to cross, and so on,' but the rapid development of aviation has changed almost overnight the fundamental bases of the policies of Foreign Offices and Defence Ministries. We have only to think how the institution of arf air service across the Pacific has revolutionised all questions of naval strategy in that region. In short, all foreign policies are being upset by this coming of the air age, and the whole world is being thrown into the melting-pot. If this unstable future has to be faced without a collective system,” Mr Hall proceeded, “and with ,a massive demonstration ‘that force and not law still rules in international affairs, then we are stepping down into chaos. The many adjustments that will have to be made in this unstable air age will be attempted by the old and tried method of war. It is a realisation of chaos as the only alternative to the collective system that has made the world suddenly rally with such force and /conviction to that system. , The only policy for Australia is, while maingaining an adequate defence system, to throw all her weight behind the British Commonwealth and the League. There is no room for doubts or hesitation”

<S> <S> <s> <*> * CANCER RESEARCH.

It is probably true to say that no pathological problem, if, indeed, any scientific problem, has ever been studied with such intensive concentration as that of cancer, says’ the “Daily Telegraph.” There is no slackening of enthusiasm among research workers to discover the cause. Dr. Gye. the Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, claim? that the knowledge of the disease gained in recent years is more extensive than that of most other chronic diseases. The secrets of cancer are hy no means fully known, but cancer has definitely ceased ito be an unaccountable mystery. Wonderful progress has cdso been made in the treatment of this disease, which annually slaps more than 60,000 , victims in Great Britain alone. Provided only that treatment is started before the infection has been carried in the blood stream from the original centre to set up other foci elsewhere, there is good hope for the vast majority of sufferers. Surgery achieves almost miraculous results, and radium is the surgeon’s chief ancillary to the knife. But till the cause is absolutely established it would seem doubtful whether any further great advances in successful treatment will be made, and it is on the search for the cause that the laboratories of the world are concentrating.

<S> / <S>

Words That Tell a Story. EMPTY CHANCE. —A chance not worth calculating on.' The ace of dice was, by the Greeks and Romans, left empty, because the number of dice was equal to the number of aces thrown. As ace is the lowest chance, the empty chance was the least likely to win. <s><?>«»<*> Words of Wisdom.

As one lamp lighteth another, nor is less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness,

—Lowell

<s> <s> <s> <s> Taie of the Day. Teacher: “Where is the capital of Britain?" Pupil: “All over the world."