NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19291, 1 April 1926, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

ESSENTIALS IN POLITICS. "I do not believe that Liberalism will ever again be a great party machine m the way in which Conservatism and Labour are great party machines. But it may play, nevertheless, the predominant part in moulding the future," said Mr. J. M. |veynes, in an address at the Manchester Reform Club. "Great changes will not be carried out except with the active aid of Labour. But they will not be sound or enduring unless they, have first satisfied the criticism and precaution of Liberals. Tho political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty. The first needs, criticism, precaution, and technical knowledge ; tho second an unselfish and enthusiastic spirit, which loves the ordinary man; the third tolerance, breadth, appreciation of the excellences of variety and independence, which prefers above everything to give unhindered opportunity to the exceptional and to the aspiring." THE PEACE OF THE WORLD. " In a lasting peace thoro will be no supremacy, only equality between man und man, whatever tho race, whatever the creed, caste, or complexion," says Dr. Robert McElroy, Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University, in an article in the Westeru Christian Advocate of America. " The man who thinks his race born to rulo is not a friend to peace. He is her enemy; for unity based upon any form of human bondage is the vainest of delusions. We ore, and wo should wish to remain, American or English, French or German, Japanese, Chinese, Siamese or whatever God has seen fit to make us; but we must be free. Toward that guiding star of all the world, Liberty, each race must struggle. This is not an ideal, abstract, artificial, within the power of each to hold or to cast aside. It is an instinct, one of the world's great unifying instincts, which all must recognise, or pay the heavy price of ceaseless, endless wars. . . . What is good for the nation is good* for the nation, and only that. If the world is to know lasting peace, with the irreducible minimum of war. we must come to think of all mankind when we speak of ' We, tho people.' And every educated man and woman, of whatever land, should vow devotion to tho largest view of every question."

MAKING AUSTRALIAN FARMERS. At the head of the Australian Farm Training College, which has been . rstablished at Lynford Hall in Norfolk, is Mr. H. W. Potts, a leading authority on agricultural conditions in the Commonwealth. Descendant of a Northumbrian farming stock, Mr. Potts emigrated to Victoria 50 years ago, and eventually Jjecame scientific dairy instructor to the Department of Agriculture, and in 1902, principal of Hawkesbury Agricultural College, a position which he held for 20 years. A writer in Time and Tide says the new college owes its birth to the generosity of a public-spirited Australian who desires to make a contribution to the solution of the problem of migration. At Lynford Hall, for a fee of £IOO, the man of education on leaving school or college cau learn under expert guidance the elements of agriculture, practical and theoretical, as they affect Australia, and while performing all the manifold operations that go to make up the everyday round of a farmer's life, test his suitability for farming as a career. Six months, of course, will not make him a complete farmer, but the training will give him a real grounding in agriculture under conditions as nearly as possible approximating to conditions in Australia; it will show if he is made for a life on the land. The rest depends on himself whon he arrives in the land of his adoption. TRADE OPPORTUNITIES. The necessity for greater trade enterprise was emphasised by the Prince of Wales in a speech recently. "Most of my journeys have taken me to countries which are aa yet in the earlier stages of their economic development," said His Royal Highness "As their population increases, as their resources are tapped, their capacity for trade will grow. As I have been able to see for myself, these processes are going on in many parts of the world with a rapidity which is apt to be overlooked unless continually studied. I urge manufacturers and traders, therefore, to be always on tho alert and to miss no opportunity which may present itself of finding new outlets. Time and tide, the old proverb says, wait for no man. It is just as true to say that time and trade wait for no man, and especially as regards these new and rapidly expanding communities, where tho demand for tho products of the factory increases almost with every tick of the clock. A trade opportunity missed is gone for ever. I would strongly urge British manufacturers and traders to keep always alert and on tho qui vive, with their eyes skinned for opportunities of dealing overseas. At the samo time, study local conditions and demands, and having found an opportunity never let it go, because somcono else will seize it." The Prince appealed also to all British men and women to "insist—and we can insist with confidence—on having good British goods." THE ENGLISH VIEW OF HISTORY. "It. is said sometimes of the English people that, unlike the' Scots or the Irish or the Welsh, they have no historical memories," writes Mr. Bennet Copplestone in Blackwood's Magazine. " Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they never harbour historical grievances. The English memory is pleasantly selective. It cherishes and hands down those incidents in its history which are, in the recollection agreeable to its taste or flattering to its pride, and it sweeps into the limbo of forgotten things everything which is distasteful or discreditable or humiliating. . . . Tho English selective memory, absurd, even childish, as it may seem to the scientific historian, is one of the most blessod gifts ever granted by God to an Imperial people. Long since tho English people, with their profound selective instinct, decided to forget the American Revolutionary War. It was not a war in which they can feel any pride, so Goorgo 111, Lord North, and the Die-hards of their day* have the sole responsibility for it thrust upon them. It was no fault of ' Ours,' say wo, as we put up a memorial to George Washington in Westminster Abbey. And yet, though we ostentatiously forget tho American War, it has left behind in all of us tho subconscious determination never again to permit a dominion of the British Crown to bo hounded into revolt."