NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18662, 19 March 1924, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

j TAXATION OF BETTING. | The Hon. Edward Lyttelton, late head- ! master of Eton, writing in the Empire Review on taxation of betting, says:—"l have never met anyone ready to affirm that if you diminish the money profits of a practice by 10 per cent, you encourage it; that by lessening the inducement you increase the temptation. Hence the eloquence spent on the backboneless boys and girls who are plunged by the thousand into the vice, and are supposed to be victimised by State recognition, is a grievous waste of breath. Once let it be clearly seen that recognition may be formally, ostensibly, and officially an encouragement, but actually a check, and the whole complexion of the situation is changed. The . rich . eloquence which has been used to defeat the awful devastation of life caused by betting, in reality tells not against the taxation of it, but for it. Let those who really know how poisonous this canker 5s backup the proposal with might and main. If the poison is working the check should be applied." AN IMPERIAL LEADER. Mr. Victor Fisher, in a series of lectures at the Imperial Institute on " Our Empire and Our People," has pointed out that if the French or the Germans had an Empire such as the British, its government and management would form the basis of their thoughts all day and every aay. The British people go their way, he says, regardless of its immense possibilities and wholly ignorant of the many directions in which it affects their daily lives. Mr. Fisher claims that Empire education should be one of the chief subjects in all schools. If, however, the general ignorance is to be dissipated, if imagination is to be stirred, it is to the individual that we must look. The Empire was built up by individuals, by leaders who saw further than their fellows. A Raleigh, or a Disraeli, or a Chamberlain, is essential if the nation is to make great departures, promote great causes. " A cause is a great abstraction," said Disraeli, " and fit only for students; embodied in a party, it, stirs men to action, but place at the head of that party a leader who can inspire enthusiasm, he commands the world," Imagination will not be kindled in the people as a whole till thoso who would be the people's leaders have kindled it in themselves. THE NEW TOKIO. A radical alteration in the design of the city of Tokio is described in the Asiatic Review by Mr. T. Okamoto, a member of the staff of fcho Japanese Embassy in London. He says that, owing to the rapid increase of population, practically every scrap of available space in the capital had been utilised for building dwellings and business premises, in entire oblivion, such is the weakness of human memory, of the fact that open spaces or fire-proof zones, as they may be called, are an essential safeguard in a great city subject to earthquake visitations. It would appear that the bitter lesson of the recent catastrophe has not been lost upon the authorities, and that they intend to attach the greatest importance to the widening of roads and to the creation of emergency squares. Doubtless the objects of facilitating traffic and promoting and improving tho public health by the creation of open spaces are also foremast considerations, but there is no doubt that there are other reasons. The idea seems to be that by laying oat wide roads and by creating parks and squares the metropolis will be physically cut up into so many sections, and thus there will be a greater possibility of preventing the spread of a conflagration from one section to another section.