NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20950, 13 August 1931, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE BLIND AND SLEEP. " Many blind people do not sleep very well, and I share this experience, particularly when I am overworked," Captain lan Eraser wrote recently in the Sunday Express. "There is something restful and suggestive of sleep about the act of closing the eyes or turning off the light. A stimulus to the mind is removed,- and partly by habit, partly by suggestion, the mind composes itself to sleep. The sighted are accustomed to thinking and living with their eyes open. The moment their eyes are shut, or the light is turned out, they lose their usual landmarks and cease to be interested in a world which has disappeared. When, therefore, there is no unusual worry or cause for wakefulness, sleep comes easily and quickly. With the blind man this change is absent. There is no shutting off the world outside to induce deep. He has to wait for his mind's eye to close—until it does so of its own accord. It cannot be encouraged; it is not open to persuasion. Those sighted people who have failed to respond to the suggestion to sleep which is made when the light is put out, and find themselves thinking and worrying and perhaps counting sheep, will know what I mean." SECURITY FOR FRANCE. The argument that, on account of her open land frontiers, France was entitled to maintain her claims for special security was advanced by Mr. Mac Donald and supported by Mr. Baldwin in a debate on disarmament in the House of Commons. This view was strongly challenged by Mr. J. L. Garvin in the Observer. " Franco has threo coasts," he wrote. "On the north th© Channel, on the west the Atlantic, on the south the Mediterranean. As for her land-frontiers, part of them are the mighty natural bulwarks formed by the Pyrenees and the Alps. Along another part of them, she marches with inviolable Switzerland; and along another part with Belgium, which it is quito certain that Germany wild never again seek to violate. What remains ? That relatively short frontier of Alsace-Lorraine which faces Germany. This is now guarded by the Rhine, a considerable military obstacle to everything but airpower. And, in addition to this, the extraordinary plans which our neighbours are' determined to complete in the next few years wilt make her eastern marches the most formidable region of fortification that the world has yet seen. . . After twelve years of the League and Covenant, French armaments to-day, relatively to the rest of Europe, are more dominant than they ever were under Louis Quatorze or Napoleon. Taking everything into consideration, it is fair to estimate that France by herself commands as much killing-power and destroying-power as any three nations in the world possessed in 1914."

A' TRIBUTE TO NEW ZEALAND. " New Zealand, as is inevitable, is suffering from the world-wide stagnation of industry and commerce; yet, badly as she has been hit, probably no part of the Empire is sounder at the core or better equipped to face any difficulties," said the Times Trade Supplement, in an editorial reference to the monograph on New Zealand issued by Messrs. Erlangers (a review of which was published in tlio Her AI,D of July 31). Remarking that it emphasised the "essential strength" of the Dominion's position, the Times continued:—lt. is pointed out that New Zealand has consistently resisted the temptation to attempt to develop industries of a nature foreign to the characteristics of the country. Out of a gross manufacturing production of £93,172,222, or, including the building industry, £102,876,284, possibly only 5 per cent, may be said to be completely foreign to the trend of the Dominion's natural development. Eighty-seven per cent, of the output of the manufacturing industries is of direct benefit to the primary producers, either elaborating their raw material, supplying them with essentials for their production, or performing social services which are of purely local concern. The opinion of the eminent bankers responsible for the monograph is that ' unless the impossible happen and any of the political parties put self-interest before State interest, and thereby ruin their magnificent heritage, the Dominion should weather almost any storm. Her record is clean, her credit good, and borrowed money has been spent on productive works.' A fine tribute and one that must surely be read with feelings of pleasure not only in New Zealand but—if only because the Dominion is so thoroughly British in sentiment and in her trade policy—in the Mother Country, too."