NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20525, 28 March 1930, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AN ENDURING MEMORY. " Exactly 300 years ago there died a man whose name is perpetuated in a wellknown phrase," Mr. A. J. Fawley wrote recently in the Daily Telegraph. " Thomas Holism succeeded his father as the official carrier to the University of Cambridge, which licensed persons to carry letters before and after the introduction of the Post Office system. He carried passengers, goods and letters between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street. Hobson also made it his business to provide riding boots, bridle and whip, and requested the hirer to take a horse for himself, but it had to be the one next the stable door. If there was any demui he declared, in a manner which prohibited further argument, that it was the horse next the door or none at all. When the animal was taken the others were moved up, and so each worked in rotation. The. university scholars coined the phrase, ' Hobson's choicq,' and it remains to this day, although Hobson died in 1630. Milton wrote his epitaph." TARIFF CONCESSIONS. Explaining the principles on which customs tariffs are constructed the Times Trade Supplement says that usually there are maximum and minimum rates of duty. The maximum (or general) tariff applies only to the goods of countries that are not entitled to most-favoured-nation treatment; to those that are entitled to it the minimum tariff applies. The most-favoured-nation prin ciplo is, of course, the keystone of the system on which international trade is conducted. Briefly, it is customary in drafting commercial treaties to introduce a clause providing that each of the two contracting parties shall grant as favourable treatment to the other as it does to any other nation. That means in practice that if, as the result of negotiation, a concession is made to a particular Government it forthwith applies to all countries enjoying most-favoured-nation treatment, and it follows that no civilised Government can afford to lose the benefit of most-favoured-nation treatment by making exceptional terms with one country. ANTIDOTE TO MATERIALISM. " Every age has its characteristics, and posterity, I fear, will say of us that we were a materialistic people, that we were distinguished by a desire for fast movement and noise, and that our reaction to the noble idealism and unequalled effort of the Great War was expressed in a raw, crude materialism," said Lord Moynihan, the famous surgeon, in an address recently. "To all such things as that some kind of antidote is necessary, something which will give a refuge and solace from the social miseries of our time. It is my confident belief and frequent personal experience that it is in the contemplation, appreciation and enjoyment of art we can find certain things explained to us. We find not only relief from our social miseries, but also a real contentment in life. That contentment does not so much depend on material things as on that inward peace which we all seek in one way or another, and which frees us from the more narrow limitations and hampering apprehensions of our material'surroundings. If life is not to be a feast or a spectacle or a predicament, but is to be a sacrament, it can only be because we indulge in what Keats called ' soul making,' and give ourselves the opportunity of allowing our souls to grow." BANKS AND INDUSTRY. "■ It lies with industry to reorganise itself, that not being within the province of the banks, and provision of capital is of little value unless a business is efficiently organised and controlled," said Mr. F. C. Goodenough, chairman of Barclay's Bank, in his address at the annual meeting. "If the banks should advance further money at a. time when the control of the business itself is inefficient, or if the industry as a whole is labouring under more or less permanent difficulties, either natural or artificial, which cannot be overcome, the money advanced by banks under those circumstances would become a loss, and no benefit would accrue either to the industry or to the banks. In many instances, where a. business fails to make progress, it may be found that the primary reason for this position is not a shortage of capital, but the handicap of inefficiency, as compared with other similar businesses either at home or abroad. In the alternative, it may be due to the ignoring of economic laws or to some alteration of basic conditions. If the difficulty is due to some relative inefficiency, it may be possible to overcome it through reorganisation. It is then that the banks can assist by helping to find the liquid capital that is necessary to such reorganisation when a scheme has been carefully worked out by experts. When, however, there has been a chango in basic conditions, or some artificial interference with economic laws, which precludes the possibility of successful operation, if the banks try to help they are then merely throwing good money after bad."

MORAL STANDARDS. " As far as I can analyse my own feelings, I should say that the motive which keeps me from a bad action is a feeling that as I contemplate it I do not like the look of it or the smell of it. I feel it to be ugly or foul or not decent,—not tho sort of thing with which I want to be associated," writes Professor Gilbert Murray in Harper's Magazine. " And, similarly, the thing that nerves me toward a good hut difficult action is a feeling that it :eems beautiful or fine, the sort of thing that I love as I look at it and would like to have for my own. Though not infallible, this moral or aesthetic instinct is a Irue fact. ... I refuse, then, to be frightened, though sometimes, no doubt, I feel concerned. We are passing through a time of strain and change, and managing the necessary readjustments on (he whole with good success. I trust for the general maintenance and gradual raising of the moral standard in a society such as ours: first to the influence of the facts of life and the lessons taught by experience; next to the social instincts and the reaction of a well-organised society upon its members by example, education and training, by liking and disliking, admiration and disapproval ; and, most of all to this inward censor of whom the psychologists tell us, this inborn moral or aesthetic instinct, the ineradicable heritage of humanity, by which men have from the very beginnings of civilisation rejected and denied what they feel to be vile within them, sought what they love, and imitated what they admire."