NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18664, 21 March 1924, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

WEATHER AND ITS CAUSES.

The real reason why we do not understand more aboK: the physical and dynamical processes of weather is precisely because in their essential features and forces toy are based upon ordinary gross matter and not upon electricity or ether, says Sir Napier Shaw. If only it were electricity and ether or atomic structure that had to be invoked, physicists would be tumbling over one another in its investigation; but being only dynamics and physics of an ordinary kind, extraordinarily complicated, it does not attract, and will not attract unless and until the multitudes of facts are firfst co-ordinated by some intelligent investigator in such a way as to invite the attention of what he would call the higher intelligence. In academic circles the study of physics has become the study of electricity and the ether, and takes in the atmosphere only in so far as electricity and ether allow. We are not likely to get much nearer to the scientific explanation of the facts until provision is made for their study with the academic freedom and facilities that have been so productive in the cases of electricity and ether.

. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE. When the history of the Royal Colonial. Institute comes to be written, says the journal of the society, its record will include many notable instances of forethought and initiative. It is generally supposed that the idea of holding Imperial Conferences originated in 1887, Queen Victoria's Jubilee, but it was many years earlier that the proposal was first made. On August 4, 1869, a meeting of influential colonists resident in or visiting London was held in the rooms of the Royal Colonial Institute (the 12-months old Royal Colonial Society, as it then was) at which it was suggested that a conference of colonial representatives, duly authorised by the respective States in which responsible government had been established, should be held in London to urge on the Imperial Government, with its weight of combined opinion, £uch changes in the administration of colonial affairs as might appear desirable. Correspondence, subsequently printed in a Blue Book, took place with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and the Governments of New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, New Zealand, the Dominion of Canada, and the Provincial Governments of the North American Colonies, Newfoundland, the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, and Mauritius. Although no practical result was attained, it is, nevertheless, an historic fact that the Royal Colonial Institute took the initiative nearly 55 years ago in suggesting a conference on the lines of those which have done so much in recent years to promote understanding and strengthen the ties of Empire.

THE REVIVAL OF AUSTRIA. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Anglo-Austrian Society in London, Lord Balfour said the reconstruction of Austria was unique in the history of the world. Austria seemed to have sunk hopelessly into a morass from which no human resolution, ingenuity, or good fortune could avail to extricate it. The Austrian Exchequer would actually have been richer —technically richer —if all the railways, salt mines, and forests which before the war had contributed so largely to the State had suddenly disappeared. One of the great ills from which Austria was suffering was unemployment, and a thing most necessary to bo done was to diminish the number of officials receiving salaries from the State and to deprive of their occupation a really most formidable number of employees. Currency was in an apparently hopeless condition. General depression seemed to have settled on the country, and enterprise seemed killed. The very source of national wealth seemed to have been sterilized and brought to naught. He could not imagine a problem more embarrassing than that presented to the League of Nations, and he still was amazed at the extraordinary success with which the attempt to deal with the reconstruction of Austria had been met. It could never have happened without the League of Nations. It could never have happened if the Government of Austria had not, with clear vision, seen the perils with which theT? date was surrounded, recognised the sacrifices which would be required, and resolutely set their face, in perfect harmony wiuli the League of Nations, to deal with this apparently desperate situation. The results had been perfectly astounding. The Austrian crown was as stable as any currency in Europe, but that was only the means to an end. The end was public confidence—to faciulato stable transactions between purchaser and producer the interchange of goods, on which all civilisation depended.