NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20465, 17 January 1930, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE LIMITS'OF TAXATION. "I do not believe there is so very much more revenue to be got out of increasing direct taxation. If you get to a point when you do not make it worth anybody's while to be rich, nobody will be rich," said Lord Grey of Fallodon, in a speech at Leeds. "If you raise taxation until you have got rid ol all rich people you will not have any revenue; you cannot have it both ways. If the Government depreciates the credit of the country, if it competos with industry in the raising of capital, it means that the expansion of industry must be restricted. Increase of expenditure; prospective increase of taxation; interference in industry—what will be the result of that? The result of that will be an increaso in the numbers of our unemployed# Here you have Mr. J. H. Thomas specially appointed to find work for the unemployed. But what a hopeless task if the Government of which he is n member is going to pursue a policy which will increase the numbers of the unemployed all the time. Tho test of good government is not whether they increase the benefits to tho unemployed, but whether, while in office, the numbers of unemployed have been reduced. I believe that thd ' nationalisation of our productive industries would be fatal to this country. No Government ever conducts industry as wisely or as economically as private enterprise."

MENTAL DISEASES. "There has grown up in tho public mind the notion that any kind ot mental disease is associated with sorno slur, soino disability, some permanent disadvantage," said Lord Dawson, tho eminent physician, in the House of Lords. "The result is that anybody afflicted with mental ailments and their friends unconsciously enter into a conspiracy, to prevent that ailment being handled. They know that there is only one way of that condition being treated and there is a danger of that person being dubbed insane and treated as an insane person. With our present civilisation and the increasing speed and strain of life associated with our material progress, it will inevitably follow that you will get a larger number of temporary mental troubles. There will be a blend of mental and physical troubles, and you will find physical trouble covered by mental symptoms, and mental symptoms covered by physical ailments. There will be a greater merging between one and tho other. The fjlct is that disease breeds less and less true—it conforms less and less to type. I would therefore plead that, in approaching this question, we see to it that we havo buried not only old ideas as to mental ailments, but we should also see that the old machinery is made as new in its outlook, and not simoly cramped by a too close adhesion to the machinery of old Acts of Parliament."

SELLING BRITISH GOODS. An interim report on British marketing overseas has been issued by the Committee on Education for Salesmanship, which was appointed in October, 1928, by Lord Eustace Percy, who was then president of the Board of. Education. The committee states that it is fully aware that many firms and associations of firms reach a high, some the very highest, standard of efficiency and have evolved systems of salesmanship, not only admirably planned and organised, but also flexible enough to meet the rapid changes in the conditions of modern markets. But the general level of prosperity of British trade must depend on the methods of the average firm. In the highly and increasingly competitive conditions of trading in oversea markets to-day, it is a matter of national interest and urgency that the standard of efficiency in oversea marketing should, as soon as possible, be raised in every trade and in every firm to as high a level as it has reached in some. The committee states that on some matters, particularly the education of the salesman, it is not yet in a position to state its conclusions. If asked what the evidence shows to be, broadly speaking, the outstanding weakness in British marketing overseas, it would answer:—" A detached and insular attitude and unscientific practice—relics of the time, long past, when we enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the world's markets for manufactured goods. For this weakness (again very broadly) the remedy is mainly to be found in a policy based on the most searching study of the character and needs of the market; on close, continuous and sympathetic contact with it; and on the guiding principle that the complete satisfaction of the customer is the basis of all ! permanent commercial prpsperity."

COVENANT AND PACT. Ifc was reported yesterday that the Council of the League of Nations had approved the British proposal to appoint a committee of 11 members to investigate the matter of amending tho Covenant of the League to bring it into harmony with the Briand-Kellogg Pact. When the proposal was made by Mr. Mac Donald at the meeting of the Assembly last September, the Geneva correspondent of the Economist said it had caused probably more uneasiness than satisfaction. "It is obviously illogical that Governments should be bound by two different sets of obligations," ho wrote. "Under the Paris Pact they are pledged never to have recourse to war as an instrument of national policy but always to settle their disputes by pacific means. In the Covenant, on the other hand, they are, in certain circumstances, free to go to war, since, during the Versailles Conference, it was felt that public opinion would insist on the maintenance of these famous 'gaps' in the Covenant. But life is not always logical, and there is considerable anxiety lest too close a study of the Kellogg Pact and too determined an effort to link it up with the League Covenant might have a disastrous result. In the first place, the Kellogg Pact is a declaration and not a method of procedure, and a declaration too closely analysed is apt to lose all its moral value. Again, the very suggestion that the Covenant needs 'tightening up,' now that we have tho Kellogg Pact, may encourage Americans to believe that their Pact is already more valuable than tho Covenant, and that, therefore, they Have no further moral obligations to the rest of the world. In the third place, a discussion on Articles 12 and 15 of the Covenant might quite possibly lend certain States to call attention to tho reservations made, for example, by the British Government, or to their own, in accepting the Kellogg Puct, and to attempt to incorporate them in the Covenant. Since these reservations aro not mentioned in the text of the Pact, they have presumably no value in the oyo of tho law, but there is wisdom in letting sleeping dogs lie, and it is difficult to see what could be gained by the risk of resuscitating the former discussions, not only with regard to reservations, but also to sanctions."