NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19156, 23 October 1925, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

RUSSIA'S FOREIGN CREDIT. When the Soviet Government announced its deliberate intention of making war on capital arid repudiated contractual obligations, it destroyed confidence and made it impossible to obtain credit. Having discovered that capital is essential to the existence of Russia, the Soviet is now endeavouring to attract private capitalists to invest their money in Russian enterprises and is also striving to obtain credit in other countries to enable it to purchase machinery and materials. In Britain, friends of the Bolshevists have been actively campaigning on behalf of the Soviet, condemning the refusal of the banks to grant credit, and contending that in consequence Britain is losing Russian orders and unemployment is aggravated. The City editor of the Times recently discussed this propaganda, and pointed out that the only reason why Russia cannot obtain credit in Britain is that the Soviet cannot be trusted to pay. It has deliberately refused to repay the many millions lent to Russia in the past. When Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald sought to force Parliament to guarantee a credit to Russia (because she could not borrow money on her own account) the Soviet spokesmen told the people of Russia that if they were fortunate enough to get the money they would certainly not repay it. "There is no economic advantage in lending money to Russia which is not to be repaid, even if it is spent on purchasing British manufactures," the writer adds. " All that happens is that British manufactures are given away to Russians. If goods are to be given away they had better to given to our own people. The reason Russia is unable to borrow money abroad is that she has repudiated on a wholesale scale her obligations. Many countries have defaulted in the past, and have been rather ashamed of it. But Russia has gloried in her default. FORESIGHT AND THRIFT. " Most of us arc neither rich nor poor, but something mid-way between these extremes. In our judgment, therefore, he who contrives to make a modest home for wife and weans, and at the same time manages to provide against possible rainy days and age, is a success, even according to material standards of value," says Mr. W. Charles Loosmore, in a new book on " The Lure of Happiness." "He who would enjoy a measure of happiness now, and for the rest of his life, is bound to make a competency the main business of his life. First things must come first, and, though it is true that man does not live ,by bread alone, without bread he cannot live at all. Indeed, the man who does not take much thought as tc ways and means, and leaves the. future to take care of itself, is evading his plain duty, and is ultimately lightly putting upon the shoulders of others the responsibility which was made for his. k . . The wretchedness and unhappiness which dog so many lives are due, not to honest failure, but to the lack of foresight, sacrifice and thrift. It is a -wrong way of thinking to confound spending with generosity or saving with meanness. The unhappiness which attends those who have failed to bo self-supporting in times of crisis and age is the result of the lowest kind of failure, if, having had the opportunity to save, they banked all upon bh'e present and put nothing on the future. The glorious privilege of being independent is a fine ideal, worthy of all, and the grit, perseverance, and other qualities it implies are as educational as they are heroic and courageous. If we honestly fail in such an endeavour, the fault not being in us, our failures may be nobler than the success of meaner men." NATURE OF "BUSII SICKNESS." The conclusion, based on exhaustive research, that " bush sickness " in cattle is due simply to a deficiency of iron in the pastures affected was presented by Mr. B. ('. Aston, chemist to the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, in a paper read before the chemical section of the British Association. Mr. Aston said veterinarians had satisfied themselves that the mortality of ruminants which occurred in every case in which the animal was kept long enough on the same land without a change, varying from six months to a year, was not due to any specific organism, that the disease did not spread from one district to another, and that transfusion of blood and inoculation failed to convey the sickness from an unhealthy to a healthy animal. The disease was confined to special areas, and affected cattle rapidly improved in condition and recovered perfectly when removed to what was known to be. healthy country. The absence of any acquired immunity in ruminants, and that horses thrived for years upon pasture where ruminants would sicken and die in a few mouths, were well-authenticated facts. The cause of this remarkable mortality, which only affects ruminants (goats and deer are reputed to be affected) might be either a, deficient element in the food supply or a poison. The second conjecture is disposed of by the analyses of soil and pasture and animal specimens, which fail to show the presence of any known mineral poison in toxic amounts. The facts that a beast will return after a change and then fatten upon the, same pasture upon which it became emaciated, and that horses are not affected, also points to an absence of any mineral poison. Chemical analyses of blood from diseased compared with that from healthy beasts showed a great deficiency of iron, and this suggested experiments with iron salts on the pasture on which sheep were grazed. Mr. Aston concluded his paper with an account of the experiments that have been made in the treatment of pastures with iron salts with a view to correcting the deficiency.