NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18135, 6 July 1922, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AUSTRALIAN BORROWING. The subject of Australian 'borrowing policy has been discussed lately by severa-i leading public men, and in a review of their opinions the Banking Record declares that one of the weak points of loan expenditure is that it is not conducted solely with a view to the utility and revenue producing capacity of the works to which it is devoted, seeing that there is a strong temptation to maintain expenditure with an eye to its effect on employment and to the credit of Governments with tho public for administrative zeal . The most important object of loan expenditure is railway construction to open up the country districts, with an Increase in settlement and in the volume of £oods to be carried. But a son of the figures of production in Australia for tho past ten years showai that aggregate quantities have not increased in proportion to the growth in publio "*»\« | on'side tho war debts). The population returns have shown that the proportion of the residents of the six capital cities to tho total population has grown materially during the same period, and that the increase in purely rural population has been relatively small as compared with that in tho cities. COMPANIES AND DEPOSITS.

Tlie Victorian Government has been considering the questiou of requiring companies which receive money on deposit" to issue quarterly statements showing the amount of money so held. " This is a step in the right direction,'' says the Australian Banking Record, " for if companies are to take deposits from the public in addition to receiving credit from those with whom they have business transactions it ifl at least proper that adequate publicity should bo given to the extent •of the "liabilities so incurred. In New South Wales returns similar .to Ithose furnished quarterly by the banks are furnished by a number of companies, and .nrblished in the Government Gazette, those for the March quarter ghowmg amounts ranging from £3000 to £1,213,935, the latter representine deposits with a mutual assurance company. Such returns would also show to what extent, if at all, those companies which receive denosits keep liquid assets available as a reserve against them. In practice, however, companies frequently nave little or nothing in the form of cash assets, but are also indebted to their banker under an overdraft. The unsoundness of the system of financing by means of deposits, which constitute a floating liability, has been illustrated in New Zealand, where it was carried to an excessive extent."

AMERICAN RESEARCH. While England has the brains, America has the money for medical research. That is the outstanding conclusion reached bv Dr. W. S. Lazarus-Barlow, professor of experimental patholoey at the Middlesex Hospital, in the University of London, as the result of a tour throughout the United States to inquire into the work done in that country in the treatment of disease by radium and other radiations " Tho States have a considerable amount of wealth and extraordinary facilities, and they are now looking out for 1 the men to ft;K«a the*!*." he said on his return to London. "Wo in England have the men, but we have not the facilities, and the parting of the ways comes just here—if the Americans can develop the men of the type that we possess in the older country there is no limit to the distance that they ran go in medical research. On the other hand, if we provide the facilities the qualitv of men that we have at the present time is such that we can bold our own. We cannot compete with them in respect of facilities, but, fortunately, we can in respect of brains. America's strength lies in the numerous foundations for medical research, and in the numbers of young men who are devotine themselves to it. Her danger is suecrested in the possibility* that she mav be overwhelmed bv attention to meticulous detail. Given avoidance of that, there is no predicating the position she will have attained in medical science in tho next °5 to 50 vears. Our danger lies not in thia direction but in the inadequate provision of facilities for the young men whom we already possess and are training." SECRECY AMONG JURORS. Following the verdict in a sensational criminal trial "in England, a newspaper published a report of an interview with a member of the jury, commenting on the evidence. Reference to the matter was made in the Court of Criminal Anneal, when after announcing the dismissal of the prisoner's appeal, the Lord Chief Justice declared the newspaper interview as " improper, deplorable, and dangerous." "'lt may be slaid," he continued, " that some jurymen are not aware that the inestimable value df their verdict is created only by its unanimity, and does not depend upon the process by which they believe that they arrived at it. It follows that every juryman ought to observe the obligation of secrecy which is comprised in and imposed by the oath of the Grand Jury. If one juryman might communicate with the public upon tho evidence and the verdict, so micrht his colleagues also, and if they all took this dantrerous course differences of individual opinion might be made manifest, which at tho least could not fail to diminish the confidence that the public richtlv has in the general propriety of criminal verdicts. Whatever the composition of a British jurv may be, experience shows that its unanimous judgment is ""titled to resoect. That respect, with a T I that it involves, is not lightly to be ♦hrown away, and it is a matter of sunreme importance that no newspaper nnd no iiiryman should again commit the blunder, to use no harder word, which has diVfigured some of the reports relating to matters connected with the trial of the case,'-'