NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20866, 7 May 1931, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE PLETHORA OF SILVER. Somo of the factors that have caused tho catastrophic fall in tho price of silver are catalogued in a booklet published in England by Mr. P. C. Loftus. "When tho Coalition Government was in power in the years succeeding the war it debased the silver coinage in use by reducing the silver content of each coin from 95 per cent, to 50 per cent," he writes. " The first effect of this was that the Mint, as it called in the old genuine silver coinage and replaced it by tho new issue, had on its hands a vast stock of unused and unwanted silver, which it flung on to the world market, causing a heavy fall in the world price. The second effect was that the example of Great Britain was followed by various other nations, including somo of our own colonies, which either debased their existing silver currency or abolished it altogether, using nickel in place of silver. This again caused forced sales of silver. Then, in more recent years, it was decided to establish the gold standard fully in India—in that vast semicontinent, with its three hundred millions of people, who for countless generations had used silver for currency purposes. In order to facilitate this, an import duty of 20 per cent, was placed on all silver imported into India, thus partly shutting down probably the greatest market for silver in the world. Concurrently with this, the. Indian Treasury kept selling great masses of silver in the world market at any price it would fetch." NATIONALISM IN INDIA. " There are those who see in the present movement and stirring of thought in India merely a movement engineered by a negligible minority which ought never to have been allowed to attain its present importance in that much of it is frankly seditious and with a firm Government coul4 readily be suppressed," said Lord Irwin, the retiring Viceroy, in a speech at New Delhi. " Therefore tho conclusion is, let us only have firm government and get back, as we rapidly shall, to the good old days of paternal administration with populous reserved for British trade. That diagnosis I believe to be superficial and distorted and wholly divorced from reality. Great Britain will delude herself if she does not recognise that beneath all the distinctions of community, class «nd social circumstance there is a growing intellectual consciousness, or more truly self-consciousness, which is very closely akin to what we generally term nationalism. I knowwell that any general statement of this kind requires great modification if it is to fit the manifold diversities of the great continent of India, and this feeling of which I speak makes itself felt through a great variety of ways, but that it is a real thing and a thing of growing potential force few who know modern India intimately will bo concerned to deny."

TRADE PROSPERITY. "Advertisement is the life stream of progressive trade," said Mr. Justice McCardie, in an address at a meeting of the National Advertising Benevolent Society. "It announces. It proclaims. It creates and broadens demand. It strengthens and develops of supply. The vital importance of advertisement is recognised on all hands. It has become ono of the basic essentials of business succesp, both here and abroad. I suppose that two of tho most striking features of recent years have been a new conception of tho dignity —aye, the nobility—of business, and a new conception of the part to bo played in domestic and world enterprise by wise and far-spread advertisement. I recall tho story of the daughter of the rich trader beyond the seas, who became engaged to an impoverished European princeling. The young man apparently raised an objection to the nature of the father's commercial activities and the daughter communicated the objections to tho father. Thereupon the father wired at once 'Complete misconception. I'm not a trader. I'm a philanthropist. See my advertisements.' In that story there lies far more truth than the sender of tho telegram realised. Yet, I would rather that ho had wired back 'Yes, I am a trader—and proud of it—for there is no better or more useful calling in the world.' "

providence and accidents. " A disaster like that which befell the Scottish express suggests to many minds one of the greatest problems of life. If, as religion assorts, all life is overruled by an all-loving Providence, how can accidents creep into the, scheme of things? Does not the fact that there are theso terrible happenings deny ono of the fundamental truths for which religion stands?" writes Dr. Sidney M. Berry in the Yorkshire Observer. " When we often hear people say that it was a special providence that they did not travel in the train which was wrecked or tho boat which sank, tho retort to that is obvious, If there was a special providence! at that particular time, what was providence doing to those who did travel? A special providence in one case would mean a special absence of providence in tho other. The truth is that we all have to face a life which has the element of hazard in it, and wo cannot expect that our path should always be on the sunny and sheltered side of tho road. A world of freedom must be a world ofirisks and we cannot have the one without the other. The noblest profession of faith in providonco is not that wo are protected along every step of tho journey, but that in the midst of tho adverse and the dangerous, battered often by experience, we are enabled to> be ' more than conquerors through Ilini that loved us.' Not to escape from tho hardships, but to face and overcome them, is the noblest ideal of life."