NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21037, 23 November 1931, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MODERN BUILDINGS. " English architecture is still in the nineteenth century. Unparalleled development in every other field of human endeavour, accompanied by a vast increase in building for quite new requirements, and the invention of concrete, steel, and plate glass, has beep accompanied in architecture bv an orgy of ancient buildings, the most- scholarly of which seem the more absurd from their greater irrelevance to their time," Mr. Chester 11. Jones asserts in a letter to the Times. " Today we go on building Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Gothic and Renaissance, and in a notably gloomy climate shut out the light from our city offices with thirteenth century tracery, third century columned and entablatured facade, and the big wall surfaces which tho rules of these styles necessitate. This we do in an age of unparalleled materials and opportunity. . . . Post-War Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, with infinitely less resource and largely at tho dictates of that greatest of architectural blessings, the need for economy (one of tho most influential factors, let it be noted, in the development of Gothic architecture), havo learned the true value of modern science. It may be said that the man in the street has accustomed himself to look on our buildings with satisfaction, and that the Orders are a universally recognised standard of respectability in which our institutions may safely indulge. ■ Apart from the aesthetic cowardice of such a retrogressive doctrine, the cost is too great in lack of sunlight, in expense of construction and upkeep, in dust and dirt; in a word, in ' inefficiency.' Will anyone but the architect and the pigeons ever regret the passing of the cornice ?"

THE POUND AND GOLD. Although Britain, and other countries, have suspended international payments in gold, it is not strictly true that they have abandoned gold as a standard of value. " The variations in exchange between countries which have suspended payment in gold are regulated as befove by the natural law of supply and demand, and the basis is a gold valuation," Sir George Leon wrote in the Times recently. " The pound is therefore not off the gold standard, but there has been a legalised suspension of payment in gold iti exchange for sterling currency at the mint par. The gold standard must continue to exist for all countries, unless there is international agreement to have some other tot\nn, such as silver, for the purposo of exchange valuation. The following facts are interesting and help one to understand the position. By the English Coinage Act of 1870 the sovereign is ordained to weigh 123.27447 grains troy or 7.98805 grammes of gold, eleventwelfths fine. That is the mint par. It has not been altered. The paper sovereign is by law still the equivalent of the gold sovereign. The dollar, the franc, and other gold standard currencies each have their mint par, and there is therefore what is known as a par of exchange. -To preserve this par of exchange it is obligatory for the central banks of nil countries who have not suspended payment in gold to buy gold that, is offered and to sell gold that is demanded at the mint par. All that has been done now is to release the. Bank of England from the clause of the 1925 Act (when we resumed gold payments after the war), which made it obligatory to sell gold in exchange for sterling rfcurrencv at the mint par. Thus foreign or other creditors desiring to exchange sterling for gold cannot now obtain gold from the Bank of England, but the standard of value of the pound is still based on gold, otherwise there would be no basis for valuation."

THE IMPERFECT CALENDAR. Discussion "upon the question of reforming the calendar has virtually concentrated on two proposals for its reform. One section, of opinion follows the suggestion of Mr. Moses B. Cotsworth, that the 364 days should be divided into thirteen months of twenty-eight days each. The other section, represented by the British Parliamentary Committee on Calendar Reform, is content with making equal quarters of 91 days each, leaving the months at twelve subject to readjustment in the number of their days. " The chief merit claimed is that the revised calendar would enable comparisons between one year and another and between periods 'of the same year to be more accurate," tho Times observed recently. " That is indisputably true. Comparisons in trade returns are often vitiated by a difference in the number of Sundays or of oilier holidays in the same period. The recurrence of dates on' the same week-day is claimed as another advantage. That, however, is largely fallacious. It has a mnemonic advantage in that social fixtures would have permanent dates . . . but who would like his birthday to fall always on a Wednesday or on a Sunday? On the other side the scheme of Mr. Cotsworth fails because thirteen is an unmanageable number, and the scheme for a year of twelve revised months "must inevitably fall between the stools of conservatism and reform." There arc also religious objections —for instance —by the Jews to the exclusion of the 365 th day from any week in the calendar. " The question really resolves itself info a balancing of simplified book-keeping against religious scruples and liking for variety, and in such a balancing the human interests are bound to weigh the more heavily," the Times adds. " Our calendar is not perfect, but it is immensely interesting. The laws t>f Romulus and Numa, the genius of Julius Caesar and the astronomy of Sosigenes, the vanity of Augustus, the deliberations of the first Oecumenical Council, the reforming zeal of Pope Gregory XIII., and the ingenuity of Lilius have all left their impress upon it. Under any new scheme a calendar of some sort would still have to be consulted; and in the circumstances most people will probably prefer to keep the present calendar lest a worse evil befall."