NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18534, 19 October 1923, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

OABLE COMPANIES' PROFITS. In view of certain extravagant statements dealing with the respective merits of cable and wireless as a means of telegraphic communication, a London Stock Exchange firm has drawn up a document, in which the present position of the cable companies in relation to wireless is compared with that of gas companies on the i, introduction of, electric light and power. It is pointed out that gas companies are not less, but more, prosperous than they were before electricity came into use. There are certain inherent disadvantages in both wireless and cable systems, but, like wireless, cable communication has improved considerably in recent years as the result of inventions. Italy, the home of wireless telegraphy, recently floated a company, with a capital the equivalent of £2,000.000. for laying cables; one of the American companies has manufactured a very expensive cable Germany ,is also relaying an extensive system of cables, while the Pacific Cable Board is duplicating part of the Austra, lian lines. These facts do not suggest that cables are going out of use. Further, an examination of the financial position of the cable companies does no' show that they have suffered from the competition of wireless transmission. Last year the profits of three great English companies— Eastern, Et-storn Extensions, and Western— to considerably more than £2,000,000, and each of. them paid, as .they have done for the past four years, an ordinary dividend of 10 per cent., free of tax, after placing very substantial sums to reserve. Since 1918 the dividends have been increased. Their reserve funds invested in first-class securities'outside the businesses amount to over £9,000.000, which is more than 50 per cent, of the combined capital of the companies, including their debenture debt.

AN IMPRESSION OF DUBLIN. It is the poverty aud the expensiveness of Dublin that first impress visitors says a correspondent of the Westminster Gazette. The houses are dilapidated, the roads unswept. The two principal thoroughfares, Grafton Street and Sacfcvillo Street, would disgrace an English country town, and beggars are as numerous as in a Continental port. Every space of blank wall is painted 1 in scarlet or red: "The Republic Lives,'' "Up the 1.R.A." General Mulcahy. whose Flogging Bill is very unpopular, and Mr. Healy come in for most comment. These notices, it is true, mean very little. The greater number of chem are written up at nightfall by young girls, still at the 'flapper' age, who seem at the moment to be the only active Republicans in the city, but they are the Hardest with whom to deal. If they are put in gaol, they hunger strike and become martyrs. A more efficacious punishment was invented by a Free State soldier, who, finding a girl engaged on this work of propaganda, quietly emptied Che pot of red paint over her head, and passed on bis way. But the most impressive tiling about Dublin, is its expectant, but apathetic air. Everyone is idle, but waiting. The stark ruins of the Four Courts and the Custom House, and a silent crowd of perhaps fifty people listening to a barrel organ, or watching an officer giving orders to a sentry, are symbols of the Dublin of to-day. It is like that most nightmarish of dreams, when one finds oneself in somo ordinary and accustomed place, yet with a constant fear at the heart that something terrible, unknown and unpreventablo, is about to happen.

THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. The relations which should exist between the advanced and backward peoples of the world is likely to lie at the root of half the international, problems which are going to confront tho world during the forthcoming century, says the Christian Science Monitor. The difficulties arise from the effect of the impact of modern civilisation on primitive, and relatively primitive, societies. It is probably true to say that every human community is capable of governing itself if it were left entirely alone. Even the Pygmies in Central Africa have a definite, if rudimentary, form of social structure. The trouble begins when what we call civilisation approaches. Corruption, the drink and the arms traffics, and merciless exploitation by foreign and domestic agencies . reduco the primitive people to a helpless condition of poverty and suffering. Experience shows that there is only one method of dealing with this crying evil, and that' is that some truly civilised power should step in and take control of the situation. But the problem it has to face /is sot primarily that of governing the b .«ird people, but of maintaining good ,ovcrnment until, through education, training and experience, the people have learned how to stand alone under the competitive and difficult conditions of the modern world. Estimates differ as to the number of human beings who still need this kind of tutelage, but there are certainly many hundreds of millions. The solution of the problem. requires that all the peoples whose affairs still need Outside supervision, should be brought under the control of-tho most advanced nations, and that; : the League of Nations should be given authority to see that the standards of go '/evnment are everywhere main tained at a proper level. Truly, when Mr. Hiram Johnson appeals to the United States to return to the policy of isolation he cannot remember that the American people is a Christian people, and that the primary mark of a Christian people is that it should be ready to extend a suecouring hand to the weak and feeble in distress.

THE WILL TO LIVE. "It is my firm conviction that- every man and every woman can Jive a hundred years if they please," says Mr. Jam's Douglas, in the Sunday Egress. •' There is ho reason why we should not live longer than Methuselah. Most old men die of everything but old age. Nearly everybody dies "young. Women cling to their youth more passionately than men. They are right. Time is the enemy. It is an outrage to be old . when you feel young The fight waged by women against the tyranny of time is a good fight. Ido not see why a woman of forty who feels like a woman of thirty should be condemned to fortitude. Nearly all the women I know look twenty years younger than they arc; and nearly all the men I know look twenty years older than they are. Women have discovered the secret of perpetual youth. No woman is older than she pleases. It is my object to discover the secret of longevity. I want to know why some persons live eighty years, ninety years, or a hundred years, while others perish in the thirties, the forties, and the fifties. It is my aim to collect and collate particulars with regard to every nonagenarian and centenarian in the United Kingdom. I suspect that nearly all the stock theories about longevity are erroneous. So far as my inquiry has proceeded, one conclusion is forced upon me, namely, that longevity is an act of will. If you believe you are going to live till you are a hundred you will probably do so.. If you believe you are going to die to-night you will almost certainly do so. It is tho will that makes men live and die. 'The will to live is not nearly so strong as tho will to die. The will to live is more valuable than all the doctors and all the drugs in the world.