NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14292, 11 February 1910, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

BISMARCK AND FREETEADE. Lv 1875 Bismarck wrote: —"Nothing but reprisals against their products will avail against those States which increase their duties to the harm of German exports." In 1878 he called a conference to consider a. revision of fiscal policy, and in that and the following'year issued several State papers, advocating tariff reform, not merely for the purpose of producing revenue, but for the protection of German industries. And in 1879 he introduced his pro- ? tective pol icy in Parliament in a speech > in which he made this remarkable state-;' ment :—"I see that those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying. Mighty England, that powerful athlete, stepped out into the open market . after she had strengthened her sinews, and said, 'Who will fight me? I am prepared to meet everybody.' But England herself is slowly returning to; protection, and in some years she ' will j take it up, in order to save for herself at least the Home market,'' Here is an-

other paragraph in this = speech:—"We have opened wide the. doors 6f our State to the imports of foreign countries, and we have become the dumping-ground for over-production of all those countries. Germany being swamped by the surplus production of foreign nations, prices have been depressed, and the development of all our industries and our entire economic position have suffered in consequence. If the danger of protection were as great as we are told by enthusiastic freetraders, France would have . been impoverished long ago, for she has had protection since the days of Colbert, and she should have been ruined long ago." For Germany read England; for 'France and Colbert read Germany and Bismarck, and there is not a word that might not with truth be spoken by an English statesman at the present hour. ' , • THE ART OF DRESS. Mrs. Flora Annie Steel has advocated in the London Times a tax upon woman's dress, on the. grounds that dress is the luxury. ii! not the vice, of women, as tobacco and. alcohol are the luxuries or the vices of men. Mrs. Steel took as her text a quotation from a newspaper, which contained the information that women who intended to canvass were busy ordering costumes for the coming election, campaign. t "Velvet," it was remarked, "is the prevailing note in these charming creations, which seem ideal gowns for the occasion." Mrs. Steel has a right to be indignant against the feminine passion for 'dress. Men, with their own peculiar passions and weaknesses, will do well to -regard it rather with a scientific curiosity quite free from contempt. Dress is not one of the most important things in the world but it is certainly quite as important as many things upon which hien spend a vast deal of time and trouble. Indeed, it is rather more important than nowadays we are apt to suppose. It may be one of the minor arts, but. still an art, a means of expression in terms of beauty, and more closely connected with life than many of the greater arts. If we are to complain of women in this matter of dress we should complain not so much that they take time and trouble over it as that they do not regard it enough as an art-, a means of expression. The trouble is that the / best of women are too apt to conceive of dress as a game rather than as an art, and as a game of which the rules are fixed and frequently altered, not by themselves, but by their dressmakers. Hence their clothes sometimes look both ugly and frivolous, just ; because they look irrelevant. Men's clothes are certainly ugly enough, but their ugliness is less tiresome because it does not attempt to express anything. It is, in the main, the result of a desire to spend as little time and trouble upon dress as possible. It is not art at all, and with all its ugliness, it is not so de- • pressing as bad art, being the result not iof failure, but of mere indifference. Dress, if it is to be an art at all, must ,be difficult, like all arts. , It needs "fundamental brain work," as well as money and time, and those who cannot give brain work to it would be wise to spend as little time and money on it as possible.