NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18461, 26 July 1923, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

DOMINION NAVIES. Reviewing the attitude of the Dominions on questions of Imperial defence, the journal of the Navy League quotes statements by overseas statesmen showing a general desire to evolve, at the Imperial Conference, some measure of common effort in the provision of sea defence. It proceeds:We can put. out of our minds at once any idea that the day of purely financial assistance to an Imperial fleet has returned. No proposal for the abolition of the Dominion navies would be looked at by the responsible statesmen from overseas. Nor is it likely that the Admiralty would advance such an idea. They did their duty as strategists when, in 1909, they pointed out that small divided forces were strategically undesirable. The conference then evolved a means of overcoming the least satisfactory features of the scheme. In time of war the small divided forces united under a single control with complete loyalty and complete success. It may be taken for anted that whatever proposals the Home Government lays before the conference will be based on the idea of individual navies for each self-governing part olf the Empire. There may be a proposal also for financial assistance regularly from the Crown colonies. Granted that Dominion naval forces remain the basis of the proposals, it remains to be seen in what, way the grave financial obstacles which Mnder complete development of those forces can be circumvented. There remains the vital question of personnel. There have been vital reductions throughout the Dominion navies; the enthusiasm for a sea career has been severely checked. There confronts the Imperial Conference the question of the training and education of a now generation of: naval personnel.

' FORTY YEARS A SOLDIER. .. , The public school boy is anathema t<|; many popular writers of the day, who arc appalled at what he. does not'know (says the Times Literary Supplement). Sir George Younghusband's book, "Forty Years a Soldier," is an effective, rejoinder the more effective that Sir George does not claim that the public school boy docs know much. What he does claim is that he has a faculty for rising .to * the occasion, and 1 for "dealing with things as they come." The young officers who took part in the Afghan War of 1878 Had: been trainedas Sir George tells us from his own experience— the shoulder-to-shoul-der tactics of Waterloo. 1 They were faced with problems that were entirely, strange to them, but they succeeded in driving the "hardiest mountaineers in the world from their native precipices." Then came the Sudanese campaign; the Waterloo methods ' were of no value v in this, V for there was rio : field iof fire; the experience acquired on the bare mountains of Afghanistan did * not serve in a country where the fighting was to be done on. a level, bush-covered plein, and the advancing force bad to, depend on pack animals for food, etc. ' Small isolated parties would be surprised and overwhelmed in the thick bush. , The , army turned "armadillo"-— going forward in square with the ' transport in . the ' centre. The , square solved the : problem ;in the Sudan. . In the next warin Burma*—the ; enemy fought in small, widely-scattered bodies in a: dense forest/ through, which it would have been impossible to move big armies. This war thus became peculiarly a subalterns' war in which junior officers with a force of a hundred men made their way through ambushes along narrow paths to the stockaded . village that had to be taken somehow or other without help or perhaps hindrance— > senior officers in the rear. And vet the Boer War pre-' sented an entirely new set of difficulties : Consequent 1 ?. when the Great War broke out, , it found the British ' officer ' trained to expect' novel conditions and to accept the- reenonsibilitv thus thrown upon him of devising counter-measures.

ILLUSTRATED GEOGRAPHY. , Posters and \ other advertising - matter have been successfully adapted to educational purposes in the : Brighton Grammar .school... The origin of the scheme is described by it* organiser, Miss M. D. Guy, in ( the Times ' Educational Supplement. ' I was teaching a class of bovs about ten years of age," she says. " I wanted to make; the boys see the places I was talking about, so I began collecting pictures, first of all buying them, but I soon found that this was too costly an undertaking. I got the pupils to collect newspaper, cuttings, a friend lent me some valuable pictures cut out of missionary magazines, , and then I availed myself of another source, the Colonial Houses and Tourists' Offices. I stuck the pictures or pinned them on rolls of plain green wallpaper, as an easy way of handling them and storing them when not in use. While searching for pamphlets in the agencies I came upon many valuable picture maps. These I found especially useful in making hitherto difficult/ points easy to the small child, and I ; made a special collection of maps. Later, when travelling in Switzerland, I was struck by the value of posters, not only as teaching material., but for their beautiful colouring. Then I wrote to the French State Railway at a time when there was a wave of patriotic feeling passing over both countries. This time I asked for some on patriotic, grounds, so that'our boys ' might know more about France. This appeal met with a most generous : response by return. I had only to mention what I had received from the French Secretary-General and all the other railways followed suit, and now they are sending me not only the best ,of their posters and books post free from, different parts of Europe, but- even photographs. To give a few : .examples of the response received, a hundred copies of' a beautifully produced historical and literary guide to Italy have been sent, , unasked, by the Italian National; Tourist Union, the United States Lines sent a hundred copies of a statistical guide to the, States, with many illustrations, and are sending photographs. A Dutch agent in Holland, who heard of the scheme, volunteered a series of guides to Australia and New Zealand, •with : , excellent maps. '■■■ _ ', ' ' ''' ' v : 1 '• < - I '»'•« it•> ";•