NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19216, 4 January 1926, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A STIMULUS TO MIGRATION. A suggestion that a lead might bo given by the Royal Family to encourage migration from Britain to the Dominions was made recently by a correspondent of tho Spectator. He suggests that permanent residences might be created in various parts of our Empire for tho younger members of our Royal Ilpuse. "No one would suggest that they should never return to England. Yet the principle of the suggestion is, not simply the erection of palaces, but the adoption of a policy battle scions of our Royalty to go out and settle overseas for the sake of our Empire and its development. Immense would be the effect of such an example. It would stimulate in a notable manner tho movement for group emigration. It would transform the concept of Empire in the mind of tho average man, who would see for himself that Britain overseas was essentially a part of Britain. It would enhance our general sense of fellowship with one another, and deepen our consciousness of ourselves as a family which is at once the oldest nation in Europe and the largest Empire that history has seen. . . The idea entrances the imagination, and would surely create an enthusiasm which would overcome all difficulties. One can but hope that it may be voiced with wisdom, courtesy arid respect, and that if it be pleasing to our King and Queen it may also bo not displeasing to the other members of their family." IRISH UNITY. There is a suggestion in a commercial letter from Dublin published in the Statist that trado may yet provo a factor in the unification of Ireland. Tho letter says: "Tho settlement of tho boundary problem will facilitate discussions aiming at the unification of Northern and Southern Ireland. Tho cost of administering the entire country would, it is obvious, be appreciably lessened if the present system, involving, as it does, duplication of Government departments and services, were abolished. Considerable savings would, in particular, be effected by the disappearance of the numerous staff required by the customs land frontier as now established. For some time past the cost of government in the North has been a subject of criticism by the business community; and complaints are likely to grow in view of the depression in tho shipbuilding industry, and tho pessimistic future for linen, consequent on the heavy fall in cotton prices. So far as tho South is concerned, it is also true that the present 6cale of taxation could be reduced with great advantage to business, but the South Stands to gain more than the North from an industrial revival in Great Britain. Activity in Lancashire would mean a much larger demand for Southern foodstuffs, meat in particular." THE LUXURY OF THINKING. "The bravest man of the age," says Mr. John Moore in the New Outlook, "is he who assays the direct and immediate task of driving mankind from its deadly inertia and stimulating its mental machinery. Surrounded by all sorts of luxuries, there is yet none so great and glorious and rare as the luxury of thinking. Tho crying need of the hour is to think deep down to reality; to the bare bones in the anatomy of thought. I think the very best thing to do in the cultivation, of the power of thought is to take some subjact, logic, for instance, and keep it in the mind. Let it lie there. But once a day (jus time affords) take it up and bring all tho faculties of the mind to bear upon it if only for a little while, and for long stretches in leisure hours. If logic is beyond the taste or powers, then take some knotty or thorny problem and arrange to do a piece of genuinely hard thinking upon it for a few moments (s,t least) every day. You will soon find the scope of your mental capacity enlarging, the walls of your mind will move like elastic to the touch of strength; you i will make the ancient discovery of tho man who wrote, ' While I mused the fire burned.' In obeying the above counsel, realise that there is a difference between tho man who thinks and tho man who thinks that he thinks. The man who thinks is a thinker. His method is to subject a new truth to investigation, to correlation with other truths, for months, possibly for years, ere he heralds it by breaking into print. The manwho thinks that he thinks allows his thoughts to rush from his mind without so much as a shirt on!" POLITICAL MORALITY. A depressing picture of the political morality of Canada is drawn by Mr. Herbert A. Smith, professor of constitutional, and federal law in the McGill University, ' Montreal, in an article in the Spectaitor. He says: It is needless to give specific examples of the low state of our pulblic morality. Some cases of corruption have developed into public scandals, others are fairly widely known among well-informed men, and many more have doubtless been effectively concealed. My point is rather that average Canadian opinion tends to regard such things with tho cynical complacency of English genetlemen of the eighteenth century, and we have not kept pace with the movement of English ideas. It is assumed as a matter of course that men go into politics to make money, and that the suppurt of the voters must be gained by the promise of direct material benefits. We do not even insist upon the elementary precautions which help to protect politicians from temptation, such as the excellent English rule which prohibits Cabinet Ministers from holding directorships. Wo are continually inviting men to occupy positions in which, their private interest is liable to conflict with their public duty. The only substantial difference between political corruption in modern Canada and that of England a century ago is that the latter affected a much smaller number of people and cost much less money. The old English governing class was very small in numbers and the electorate was an insignificant fraction of the nation as a whole. Li Canada today the number of people with a direct personal interest in the government is very large and the electorate is almost coextensive with the adult population. The result is that corruption, whether in its moral or in its material consequences, is much more injurious to us than it was to our ancestors in the Old Country. It might be good for us to challenge our own complacency, to reflect that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth," and to ask ourselves quietly whether in some important matters we are not a long way behind the "old" countries that we are a little tempted to despise.