NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20131, 17 December 1928, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CURING UNEMPLOYMENT. Reference to tho difficulties of the unemployment problem was made recently by Mr. Winstone Churchill, Chancellor of tho British Exchequer, in a speech at Waltham Abbey. lie said tho present Government had never pretonded to bo ono of cure-alls and know-alls, but they had tried to give a clean, decent, honest administration to the State, and to avoid partisanship. The great question of unemployment remained. Ho did not believe anyone had a complete remedy for unemployment. He was sure that if any party men camo forward and said, " We can cure unemployment," thoy were misleading tho people. It would be quite easy to cure unemployment for a few years. That could be done by borrowing on a very large scale, but tho result would be exactly that which shipwrecked sailors on a raft experienced when they drank salt water to slake their thirst. They must try to seek for the remedies for the disease, and not merely the remedies for tho symptom. In the rating scheme tho Government claimed that thoy were applying a remedy to the disease. They did not claim that it was a complete remedy, but that it was an effective remedy so far as it went. An issue in tho next election would he whether a Socialist Government was to bo placed in control of tho country. That meant handing over tho Government to the mon who only a few years ago wcro managing and mismanaging the general strike. Mr. Snowden had promised a repeal of duties amounting to £44,000,000 or £45,000,000. Where was the money to come from for tho social reforms which tho Socialists were so eagerly promising? Tliey promised to gather a surtax, but they would have already given away more than half of its maximum yield, assuming that tluy were able to collect it. GREAT WINDS. All storms of wind aro in their origin rotatory. They revolve round a ccntro because they aro really whirlwinds, says a writer in the London Spectator. Tho centro, or axis, of tho storm may not move forward more than 10 miles an hour. Twenty miles an hour is quite a high rato of progress. Yet tho velocity of tho wind round tho continually expanding circumference may bo of full-gale forco (say, 60 miles an hour), or of the force of a hurricane, typhoon, or tornado, and reach 130 or more miles an hour. North of tho equator the storm revolves against the hands of the clock, and south of tho equator in the contrary direction. It was in 1848 that Mr. Piddington suggested that the rotatory movement of storms should bo signified in tho single word " cyclone," which would cover all the various names for storms. How well his suggestion has succeeded may bo seon from tho daily weather forecasts, which make us familiar with cyclonic and anti-cyclonic conditions. It was only in modern times that the circular movement of storms becamo so well understood that scamon loarned how to escape from the deadly centro. In the old days a seaman who ran before tho storm believed that ho was escaping from it, though ho may only havo been edging gradually into tho centro. And if ho arrived there he almost certainly did not return to tell tho tale. The wind does not blow accurately round tho centro, but has a spiral inward movemont. There is much legend about the centre of the storm, but it is, no doubt, legend based on fact; thorp is, it is said, a patch of uncanny calm surrounded by squalls from every point of tho compass, and tho sea at that point is forced up into a kind of pyramid by tho outside pressure. Tho typhoon of the East Indies and the China seas, the tornado, and tho simoom, aro all different names for much the same thing.