NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21101, 8 February 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TARIFF BARGAINING. The advantages to be gained by Britain by using a tariff as an instrument of bargaining for concessions by other countries have been frequently emphasised by Mr. Baldwin. Tho principle was clearly defined by tho late Marquis of Salisbury forty years ago in a letter quoted in the volume of the biography edited by his daughter, Lady Gwendolen Cecil. "The question (of fiscal retaliation) —in view of tho growing protection of the world—will force itself on us," Lord Salisbury wrote. "I have never been ablo to see how it was inconsistent with the free trade theory in its most absolute form; unless it can bo said that self-defence is inconsistent with u peaceful policy. In every other department of life wrong is averted by the danger of retaliation. Nations have to inflict the retaliation for themselves; individuals get courts of justice to do it for them. But to retaliation in •tho end the whole mechanism of self-defence or commondefence must come. If your situation is such that you arc known to be unable to invoko it, you aro powerless; you must submit to be robbed and murdered. Why is this true as to every other evil man can inflict—and not true as to hostile tariffs HEALTH STANDARD.

."A man's health is not (o be judged by its relation to some standard or average, but by its relation to itself at an earlier period," the medical correspondent of the Times Trade Supplement wrote recently. "There are, for example, shortwindod people who have never been other than short-winded. What matters in such cases is an increase of short-winded-ness, not the fact of the short-windedness. To call such a man unfit because he cannot run 'the average distance for a man of his years and build' is to fall into error. And it is not doctors only who commit mistakes of this sort. There are hundreds of anxious people to-day whoso anxiely is duo to their inability to play some game with a vigour equal to that of 'the average man.' They imagine that they are ill or are falling into illness and «ither over-exert themselves or deny themselves tne exercise which they need. Let a man rnako reasonable discount for advancing age and then measure himself against himself. If he docs this he will arrive at a shrewd estimate of his true physical state and need not bother about the physical state of other folk. A tendency to fatness is present even in quite young people; So is a tendency to thinness. Theso tendencies will become more, pronounced as time goes on. Why bo surprised or upset? Fat men live often to great ages and enjoy excellent health all their lives. T\s same is true of tall men, of short men, of men with great powers of endurance, and of men with little or 110 powers. It takes all sorts to make a world, and that world will be healthier when this fact is recognised by all." AUSTRALIA'S HANDICAP. "Whatever the Loan Council may do, whatever plans may be evolved, however statesmanlike, however carefully thoughtout those plans may be, they cannot possibly succeed if the present Government remains in office in New South Wales. It is literally true to say that no plan for the rehabilitation of Australian finances and for the restoration of financial and business stability can possibly succeed if Mr, Lang remains in office in New South Wales." said Mr. T. R. Bavin, Leader of tho Opposition in New South Wales, in a speecli last week. Whatever Mr. Lang might promise by way of inducing tho Loan Council to provide him with money for immediate necessities, the position remained the same. Not one of the promises which ho made at the recent Premiers' Conference had been fulfilled. Tho adjustable expenditure had not been reduced by 20 per cent. The deficit at the end of this year would be several million pounds more than tlie £5,500,000 to which Mr. Lang solemnly promised to limit it. Tho New South Wales scale of expenditure was still on a vastly higher level than that of any of the other States. Repudiation still remained the official policy of the Government. Confiscatory legislation like tho 5s in the pound wages tax and the Insurance Deposits Bill were still a part of its legislative programme. It still adhered obstinately to an industrial policy which deliberately condemned thousands of men to live on the dole instead of getting work at reasonable wages. It was completely out of step with tho aspirations and efforts of the other States of Australia. These were tho governing facts in tho general Australian position, he said, and while they continued, nothing that Mr. Lyons and all the other Premiers together could do, nothing that tho bankers could do, nothing that the economists could do, would restore the situation. The one thing that mattered, not merely to New South Wales, but to Australia as a whole, was to get rid of Mr. Lang and what he stood for. Until that was done, real recovery was impossible for Australia.