NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20174, 7 February 1929, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

INTERNATIONAL PROGRESS

"In terms of the long perspectives of history the ten years since the World War are more significant than those of the war itself; for in this decade the world has come to grips at last with a problem much more vital than the readjustment of European empires," says Professor James T. Shoiwell, of Columbia University, in the New York Herald Tribune. "The way is slowly opening before us by which the field of international affairs will be opened up to the same kind of political action as is used within the State to ensure both progress and the maintenance of rights. It will not open all at once; it will open first when nations' interests run together; but the thing which makes these interests develop is the very thing which has changed the nature of war. Science, in its control of the forces of nature, is breaking down the world-old barriers of time and space ar.d making us interested in the maintenance of peace between other nations. The future will increase this process; nothing can stop it; statesmanship is Mind if it resorts to the barbaric instruments of the past when the new forces are at the disposal of nations—forces that work more mightily for peace than all the longings or hopes of men themselves. lor it is intelligence which is on the march, and aooDer or later it will substitute for the oassing armistice of nations an enduring peace."

THE WELSH COALMIXERS. "Wales is to-day face to face with a national calamity—with suffering on a scale and of an intensity unknown in this country since the Hungry Forties," the Welsh Outlook stated recently. "Of the mining population of something over 200,000 in South Wales, nearly 80.000 are walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and 30.000 more are only able to obtain work for two or three days a week. And the worst is not yet. Owing to the economic impossibility of carrying on, collieries arc closing one after another. The number of unemployed grows with every pit closed." Commenting on this situation the Times observed :—"These people have no hope in themselves until they can be transferred, one by one, to what are areas of hopefulness just because they are areas of employment. The field cf industry which formerly sustained -hem is barren. Until the time comts when they can be given a new place in industry they are powerless to help themselves or their families. Their idleness is constrained, and the best gift to them would be the opportunity for work. For the time being they have to be maintained brothers, and they deserve something better than either the poor law or the unemployment insurance fund can do for them. It is not merely a temporary emergency that has to be tided over, bu* a continuing and increasing distress. Ho-" acute individual hardships may be can be gathered from the statement of last year's Lord Mayor of Cardiff that there ate women who must borrow another woman's boots before they can go shopping, and that hundreds of men stay in bed to save a meal"

THE BUILDING OF BRIDGES. "Bridges are public buildings of significance and deserve as much care as is devoted to less prominent and costly buildings. Great bridges also are public monuments, and should be worthy of the commanding positions which they inevitably occupy," says the Royal Fine Art Commission in a report in which it condemned proposals for new bridges over the Thames at Richmond and Marlow. "Tbo Royal Commission notice a tendency to consider bridges as purely utilitarian —merely as short sections of long roads, whereas their influence upoc the landscape is profound. It frequently occurs that bridges are designed without due regard to architectural form or relevance to the neighbouring township or countryside. Competent architectural advice should be invited at the outset, in order that the architect and the engineer may co-oper-ate in considering the problem at its inception and as a whole. The engineer's training concentrates his mind on t}ie literal facts of construction, whereas tho architect is trained to apply his imagination to those facts, and to translato them into terms of aesthetic value. Ho has to consider mass, silhouette, proportion and to study how best to draw essential qualities from his material, whether it bo brick, stone, steel or reinforced concrete. The choice of colour and material, the relevance of the bridge to the immediate neighbourhood and its character in relation to tho general surroundings, all demand careful study 0:1 tho site before reaching a decision as to design, quite apart from the constructional question."