NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20619, 18 July 1930, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. "I attribute everything in every country to the climate. The constitution of the State, the peculiar form of its government, the customs of the people, their art, literature, virtues and vices and amusements. all are a matter of climate," says Miss Mary Borden, the novelist, in an article in Harper's Monthly. "The American brand urges men to gigantic endeavour and daring experiment. ft, achieves miracles of energy, fantastic victories over natural obstacles. It impels men, more than any climate in the world, to work, to be active. It is intolerant of laziness, has so little use for it that it simply wipes the lazy man off the slate. It is not the spirit of Democracy in America that has fashioned a god out of the itlea of work. The worship of work and the spirit of Democracy are. both ahko, I maintain, due to the climate, and one of the most hopeful things about it is just this intolerance of idleness. We all know that America has not yet produced a race, or a racial type, or a racial mind, and this fact—to be very frank—is a guarantee of Great Britain's moral supremacy for the next few hundred years. After that, when the population of the United States has added to itself another hundred million people, Great Britain may have to take second place. In the meantime, 1 back England and the enduring power of England and its curious slowly developing lifo and its obstinate, invincible unity, which is so little understood by foreign politicians and which I attribute entirely to its geography, or in other words, to its climate." THE FEDERAL BUDGET. "If there is anybody who believes for a moment that, on top of the parlous financial condition of the Stales, the Federal Government has any real hope of raising £12,500.000 of new taxation direct, and indirect, he has not revealed himself," said the Sydney Morning Herald, in commenting on the Federal Budget. "The air of politicians and public alike is one of cynicism where not of dismay. One State already is practically tindci commission, fur in South Australia the coming State Budget is to bo drafted under advice of an extra Parliamentary committee of financial advisers. The four chief Stales have all had to adopt emergency measures, such as a special levy on all wages, to relievo unemployment, or rationing of employment. in the Public Service, or both. Only the Federal Government professes to be able to finance a record deficiency in a year of unprecedented industrial depression and financial stringency without reducing its administrative expenditure. The Federal Government alone among Australian Governments professes in its Budget proposals to believe that the warn ing signs of shrinking resources of revenue, direct and indirect, can be disregarded in this year's calculations of their capacity to bear heavier levies. Whether the Australian taxpayers have ever actually contributed incrcised taxation levies so heavy in any one year is dillicult to compute. But certa.iilv increases so heavy have never been deliberately laid upon them; and this in a year of declining resources, strangled production, deliberately restricted oversea trade, and the announced intention of the Loan Council to rely upon Australian investments alono to provide current loan expendituro funds."