NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20761, 2 January 1931, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

EMERGENCY AT SEA. Strong objection to the design of the main stairways in passenger liners was expressed by Mr. E. F. Spanner, addressing the general meeting of the North east Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, at Newcastle, on the disembarkation of passengers in emergency at sea. In emergency, tho vessel might not be floating upright; she might be rolling and pitching; the passengers had to bo evacuated or disembarked from a predetermined disembarkation deck; and tho passengers had to be disembarked info boats swinging from points high in Mm ship, and partaking of tho movement of the ship. He hoped that, at some eady date, naval architects would realise that giund stairways, wide-stepped, imposing, spacious and ornamentally balustraded entrances, were next-door to absolutely useless as ways of escape for persons three or four decks below the boat-embarking deck—on a ship with a list of 15deg. Even with a list of no more than 7£deg. the women and children, the old and ailing, would find it impossible to got up tl«ise stairways. Successfully to negotiate a series of inclined wide-stepped stairways in unfavourable circumstances would tax the powers of a fit man. It seemed to him essential that passenger spaces should be provided with proper escapo stairways of restricted width, sloping in a fore and sft direction, and well provided with stout handrails, so that no necessity arose for tho use of large main stairways for escape purposes. Even so, there would be need that the number of su.ch stairways that a passenger should be expected to negotiate to get to his boat should be cut down to a minimum. In other words, the boats should bo entered from a disembarking deck as low down as it was possiblo to arrange it. BRITAIN'S DEFENCE FORCES. "Nobody will seriously challenge that the only purposes of the Army, Navy and Air Force are the maintenance of peaco and the provision of security throughout tho Empire. At least wo are the last of all the Great Powers against whom any other purpose could reasonably be alleged," tho Times remarked recently. "For example, between 1925 and 1929 British expenditure on the Army declined by 11 per cent., whereas tho expenditure of other great nations increased by from 15 per cent, in the case of the United States to 102 per cent, in tho caso of Soviet Russia. Moreover the true figure of our total expenditure upon armed forces is not £110,000,000, but £92,271,000, after proper allowance is made for pensions, retired pay, gratuities, and other non-effective charges. The comparable figure for 1913-14 was £79,113,000. But against tho increase of somo £12,500,000 since that daf.o must bo set the cost of a practically new service, the Air Force, which amounts to nearly £18,000,000; the cost of liighei pay, which amounts in the Army and Navy alone to over £6,000,000 for about 90,000 fewer men; and the increased cost of equipment, which cannot certainly bo estimated but is certainly substantial. In 1913-14 the fighting services cost 42 per cont. of the total Budget, and social services cost only 23 per cent,. In the current year the fighting services will cost only 13.4 per cent, of the Budget total and the social services 47 per cent., exclusive of £30,000,000 borrowed to pay unemployment benefit. Though the cost of national defence both actually and relatively may be still high enough to suggest that it should bo examined carefully, it is certainly not high enough to warrant that it should be examined exclusively." THE EARTH AS A MACHINE.

Addressing the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, Professor J. W. Gregory said the earth could ba regarded as a machine, as it consisted of a combination of various parts and was moving through space and revolving around its axis in mechanical obedienco to the major forces of the universo and without any conscious impulse or freo will of its own. The combined rotation and revolution of the earth determined the weather and seasonal changes. The sea acted as the great regulator of the atmosphere, and counteracted all the disturbing agencies; for if too much carbon dioxide was taken from the air the bicarbonates in the water were dissociated and the sea breathed it forth until the standard proportion was restored. If volcanic activity or forest fires added an injurious amount to the air, the sea absorbed the excess and retained it as bicarbonates. The atmosphere was thus maintained at the special composition necessary for human respiration. Land would be of no use to man unless most of its surface were sloping. All the land was constantly being lowered by wind and rain, and would in time bo planed so level that the rain water would lie upon it, and collect in the hollows, and bo removed only by the slow, chilling procoss of evaporation. But thanks to the constant interaction of the unequally weighted crust and, the shrinking interior, the surface was being lowered in some places and upheavod in others. The instability of the crust, which wo deplored when an earthquake devastated a provinco or killed 100,000 peoplo or shattered picturesque Italian towns, renewed the slopes on which the habitability of the earth ultimately de pended.