NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13844, 2 September 1908, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

FOREIGN" SUBJECTS IN CHINA.: Thk assumption by Germany of the protection of Turkish interests in. Chin? has • directed the attention of tha Chinese Government to the whole question of foreign passports and protection. To the German notification China replied that, while willing to receive communications from Turkey through the German Legation, she cannot relinquish to Germany the rights of protection in China over the subjects of a Power which has no treaty with China. Especially will China in future decline to issiiu passports or to grant ex-territo rial rights to the subjects of a Power like" 1 urkey, within whose borders the subjects of other nations retain, as in China, exterritorial privileges. China is also considering the question of the passports of ■ those Eoman Catholic missionaries, who, being subjects of : Powers represo:;;ed in , Pekin by Ministers Plenipotentiary, obtain , passports for the interior, not from their own Ministers, but from a Legation exer- ' cising a Roman Catholic protectorate. A 1 passport .<* issued speaks for the holder, 1 even when of a different nationality from that of the Legation granting it, as "onr fellow-countryman." China is becoming more strict about foreigners travelling in the interior. She was alarmed recently by the arrival of a body of 60 Japanese in. Mongolia, who divided into parties and proceeded to make a survey of the country. She now forbids survey work in the ulterior except under special permission. During recent, years practically the whole of the 18 provinces of China proper and Manchuria have been surveyed by, British intelligence officers, Germans, French, and others, and maps have been published to the great advantage of the Chinese and of th» world, but the Japanese action in Mongolia, the scale on whicn the surveys were conducted, and the conviction that th.3 results will never be published, especially in view of the Japanese veto upon railway construction northwards from , Hsin-mii'-tun, cause China misgiving, and have led to the issue of the new regulations. DANGERS OF UNDERFEEDING. Sir James Crichton Browne, speaking at th'i annual congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, at Brixton, on " Parsimony in Nutrition," pointed out that physiologists and medical men of high authority were preaching, not merely simplicity of diet, but a degree of abstemiousness that would hitherto have been regarded as dangerous. ; Chronic'overfeeding was one of the burning questions of the .hour. The campaign against 'overfeeding was all very well,, but we,, need not substitute for it, or, rashly accept, the new and etartlihg ; : standards prescribe for lis. The diet of British and other races of Western Europe, together with theif descendants in different parts of the-globe, liar 1 invariably consisted of cereal and farinaceous articles, fruit, and animal flesh, and the success of ( the races might almost be measured by the degree in which animal flesh had entered into their , diet. It was clear that .animal food had played a, decisive part *in human evolution, and that the craving for it had largely . contributed to the advance cf civilisation. The conviction that eating was one of the chief pleasures of life had led to much too close shaving in diet. There was overwhelming testimony to the beneficial effects of strenuous physical exercise in the shape of muscular development, but how .many athletes lived to a green old age, and how" many who had undergone a severe training . and made records in one way or another succumbed prematurely to heart troubles? The urgent question of to-day was not how we might teach the poor to thrive on an attenuated fare, but where they should buy' bread that they' might eat. We should aim not at parsimony in nutrition, but try to scatter plenty on a smiling land.