NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19663, 15 June 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A LEAGUE AIR FORCE,

" The request of the League of Nations for an air fleet at its own disposal is obviously sane and innocent," writes the Rev. Dr. F. W. Norwood, of the City Temple, to the Morning Post. " The speed with which negotiations may be instituted counts for much in the modern world, and the aeroplane offers the speediest transport. The personal touch is one of the secrets of efficiency. To it, perhaps more than anything else, the league has owed many of its finest achievements. It should be possible to transport the most efficient personalities to the scene of trouble with the minimum of delay. The distinctive marking of the league's planes should give them much the same general acceptance as does the Red Cross of Geneva. Surely there is nothing to fear. It is inconceivable that league planes would carry arms. They would be messengers of peace. How could they possibly enforce the league's rights against a recalcitrant country ? lam not aware that the league has any ' rights.' Its function is to prevent war, not to wage it. If the member nations go to war, they do it upon their own decision, and not upon the command of the league. In the event of any war, the analogy of the Red Cross holds good of all the equipment of the league. Any alteration to the contrary would require a radical reconstruction of its constitution. By all m'eans let her equipment for ensuring peace be abro»».t of modern needs." A PICTURE THAT WILL LIVE. One of the outstanding pictures in this year's Royal Acadamy exhibition appears to have been Mrs. Dod Proctor's "Morning," to which many of the critics have given unstinted praise. It is described by Mr. Frank Rutter in the Sunday Times as a "superb masterpiece of modern painting" and "a noble painting" of a sleeping girl. "Here is no artificial composition reeking of the studio, but a fragment of life, nobly seen and simply stated," he declares. "The girl is a girl of the people, the bedroom is humble and austere in its furnishing. Beyond the girl and the bedclothes, which afford an ascetic but exquisite harmony in greys and pinks, we get but a glimpse of a corner of a chest-of-drawers, a chair and the wall beyond. But with these few accessories the picture is full from corner to corner with life, air and light. These are the elements which Mrs. Proctor has organised into a creative design of compelling power and beauty for all who have eyes to see. How exquisite is the painting of that left hand, at rest but full of life. It is only the very greatest of the great masters who have thus succeeded in suggesting the tremulous fluttering of microscopic muscles beneath the surface of the skin. Looked at in detail, or in its splendid entirety, Mrs. Dod Proctor's picture is a superb achievement, the greatness of which will probably be still more patent a hundred years hence than it is to-day. TOWNSMEN AS FARMERS. " An intelligent man, who sets his mind to learn agriculture as he would set his mind to learn chemistry or engineering will make a better farmer than an unintelligent man whose methods are based on rule of thumb, however long his experience may be," says Dr. Haden Guest, in a pamphlet on migration to Canada. " The idea that farming is a mystery, which can only be appreciated by a man with a lifelong apprenticeship to the soil plus a certain measure of sentimentalism about the beauties of nature and a few doggerel rhymes about sunsets and -sunrises as methods of forecasting the weather, is just plain bunkum Experience counts very much, of course, .i farming, provided it is based on real observations worked upon by real intelligence. But intelligence and scientific study can make up in a few months for the lack of many years of experience in farming, just as in every other calling. Speaking broadly, therefore, a townsman of the character that wants to farm, and with a fairly good education, will make a better farmer than an agricultural labourer with a poor education and with consequent undeveloped faculties. And no townsman need fear to tackle farming if he is prepared seriously to learn the subject as he would any other."