NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20113, 26 November 1928, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE PRIME MINISTER'S BURDEN'. "So far from its being impossible, 1 maintain that it is highly desirable that t.lio Prime Minister should bo in the House of Lords, whatever party may be in office,"' says a contributor to London Truth. "The fiercer and more frequent the demands of democracy upon the legislature, the more expedient is it to withdraw the head of the Government from the daily and nightly strife of ihc popular chamber. During the rows with the Irish Nationalists in tho last century everybody felt what an advantage it was to have the battle 011 the floor led by a young man like Arthur Balfour, while Lord Salisbury remained 011 his watchtower in 'another place,' and, apart from tho Opposition, the tide of business flows ever more strongly into the House of Commons. Tho burthen of controlling and guiding the legislative machine iu these days is too heavy to be combined with attendance in tho House of Commons. Mr. Lloyd George found it so in tho years following the war. and the Premier's task is not, diminished but increased in the last six years. Would it not be better if the Prime Minister became Earl Baldwin—tho title has a Saxon ring which must appeal to him—and left the leadership of the House of Commons to Mr. Churchill?" THE ZEST OF DISCOVERY. Commenting on the discovery of a new picture by Gainsborough, the Morning Post says:—"After all, the marvel is, not that so much that is most significant and precious has- been lost 01* destroyed, but rather that so much has survived amid all the mischances and blunders of lime. To reflect 011 tho casual and belated form in which the text of Shakespeare's plays was preserved for posterity is to realise how much at hazard the greatest treasures of literature havo been. And yet experience proves that things of great price, unrecognised though they be, may survive destruction by a miracle; and defy moth and worm, as well as ignorance and indifference, through generations and even centuries. It is as though their worth were talisman, and kept them, in th» teeth of listlessness, to prove that indeed 'honour pecreth in tho meanest habit. Serious scholars do not yet despair that some day, somehow, somewhere, many of tho secrets which have been baffling research through the ages will be made plain; that tho answers are to bo found, if only tho seeker knew where to look for them. Science has the samo exhilarating senso of tho possibilities of discovery, being well aware that tho thing found" is generally not the thing sought for. It is the quest that matters; and for that reason it is perhaps a merciful dispensation that has left so many important things in doubt. The human spirit finds both a stimulus and a refuge in the task of discovery. If there were no room for conjecture, there would bo no zest to life." CULTURE BY TRAVEL. Remarking that modern economics had expanded beyond the old limitation of matters relating to the production of wealth, and was concerned to-day also with the spending of wealth, Sir Josiah Stamp, in an address in London recently, said he doubted whether full recognition had yot been given to the cultural valuo of travelling and regard paid to tho part that travelling had played in the process by which had been brought about the great sobriety of British people. Wo seemed to have lived beyond tho time when even tho least wealthy found happiness in stopping at home and "soaking," and in many respects travel was displacing tho less worthy forms of pleasure. Ho believed the day was coming when the idea of travel being a dash to u town in order to dash somewhere else would bo revolutionised, and there would be developed tho civilised idea that the culture of travel lay not in motion and rushing about. With the calmer and more intensive appreciation of what wc saw, would come increased knowledge. With this fuller knowledge of places and people would come a closer touch between poople, and where that existed tlieie followed a result more valuable to peace than all that propaganda could produce. Travel was tho most effective means of securing a proper distribution of the qualifies of humility and pride. A man was only as big as the ideas lie could muster.