Notes on the News

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 18 January 1939, Page 3

Notes on the News

Road To Health According to a report by the Leaguo of Nations, Australia leads the world in the fight against malnutrition. Lord Horder, a noted English physician, in a broadcast talk in 1937, said: . . The simpler and more restricted the food the less must we interfere with its nutritive value, whether in its manufacture or in its cooking; in this case bread must be made from the whole of the meal, potato must be the whole potato, and rice must be the whole of the rice. “Hunger is not a safe guide to nutrition. A man may fill his belly with food and so feel satisfied, yet he may be undernourished. And he may be well nourished and <pnro v-n f ecl hungry. “Just as nut mat a'hi appetizing foods are better for us than artificial and doctored foods, so natural and pleasant forms of exercise are better ' for us iu every way than drill and, physical jerks. Walking and hiking, i outdoor games of all sorts—playing themselves and not watching others play them bicycling, swimming, gardening. digging in allotments, things that bring ns more Into contact with mother earth, the sun, the wind, and even the rain; all these make for' health more readily and more pleasantly than anything we do at the bidding of the drill scrim.-n* •• -die gymnasium i»«" India’s I rust.* An official repou predict.-* me financial and economic collapse of India if the policy of increasing domestic production is exteuded and if the system of maximum industrialization L, pushed to the lengths contemplated by Congress and the Provincial Governments. The policy of domestic production is largely the work of Gandhi. He built up what is called the Village Industries Organization. He believes that the revival of village industries will infuse life into occupations that arc now dying out. Spinning i* the industry on which he has set his heart for many years and It is now directed by the All-India Spinners’ Association. He started a campaign, too. against mill-polisbed rice and mill-ground wheat. He also encourages the use of coarse susnr <gur> as against the factory-refined irtiele. India is essentially agricultural. 70 per cent, of the people living therefrom. Wheat, rice, cotton, tea, jute, linseed, rubber, and some opium are the principal productions. There is an unusually wide range of metals In the conn* Excluding the Native States and government factories British India has ihout 7000 industrial establishments »mploying more than 1,200.000 persons. The cotton industry is the most impor.ant, and jnte mill*; come next.

I Madame Curie An interesting photograph in today’s issue shows the memorial to Madame Curie, who, with her French husband, was responsible for the discovery of radium. It has t>een erected at her birthplace in Poland. Madame Curie’s name before her marriage to Pierre Curie, a French scientist of remarkable gifts. was Manya Skoloovskl. She was 27, and a student in Paris, when she met her husband. She kept herself in Paris by working as a governess—“studying furiously, on three francs a day—for living expenses, clothes, and university fees. She lived for weeks on butters! bread and tea. Science was her only extravagance.” At the end of 1597 she had two university degrees, a fellowship, and a monograph to her credit. Her first child was a few months old. and while nursing her daughter, and cooking, she worked for her doctor’s degree. She chose for a research subject an investigation of a recently discovered , phenomenon—Bnequorel’s rays. Beci querel, a French scientist, had dis- | covered that uranium salts spontaneously emit mysterious rn.v«. eapuble of penetrating paper and affecting a | photographic plate. Where did the apparently never-diminishing energy of these rays come from? For nearly four years, through ill-health and poverty, ! and aided by her husband, she searched i and produced a decigramme of radium in the pure state. In the following year she received half of the Nobel prize for physics. They were still miserably poor, eking I out their small budget with part-time teaching jobs. Next year her second [ child was born. Rut her labours for 1 science never censed, even after her t husband was traeirally killad hv beins I run down by a vehicle. 1 Tn 1911 she received 'lie Nobel prize ! fo r the second time. An Institute of Radium was formed, with Madame Curie in charge. She presented it with a gram of radium, worth 1,000.000 francs, that she and her husband had prepared. She died about five years ago of pernicious anaemia—it was later diagnosed as radium poisoning.

Japan In China Great Britain is concerned at Japan’s policy in China, a policy that seems to have for its aim, the forcing out of Western influences. In January, 1938. .Mr. Koki Hirora, Foreign Minister, asserted that China had been invited to enter Japan’s anri-Soviet-East Asia bloc and that the request had been rejected, so tlie Nanking \ Government must, therefore, make way i for a regime ready to give Japan the co-operation she needs. I Foreign Bowers were urged to realize that adjustments to Japan’s demands were necessary and he assured them in unusually explicit language that China’s door would remain wide open for their economic and cultural enterprises.