NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21142, 28 March 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

PIONEERS OF SCIENCE. It was unfortunately very much easier . to recognise man's greatness after lie was dead and when they were freed from tlie . distraction of the actual presence which • unhappily tended so often to be odd, i angular, and even quarrelsome, said l)r. Wilfred Trotter in his Hunterian Oration in the theatre of the Royal College of i Surgeons. Apart from tho happy few ■ whoso work had already great prestige ■ or lay in fields that were being actively expanded at the moment, discoverers of new trtijh always found their ideas rc- ' sistcd. The consideration of this process was often obscured by two assumptions: first, it was supposed that the most harmful resistance came from obvious and noisy prejudice and that tho more dangerous resistance of inertia and quasinational negation was unimportant; and, secondly, it was supposed that workers in science were of course free from any resistive tendency but a rational conservatism. Each of these assumptions was an almost complete delusion. Dr. Trotter said that it was not as a surgeon, as the maker of his great museum, or even as a discover in science that Hunter's greatness ■ was revealed or his influence perpetuated. It was by his example in the uso of the scientific method—faithfully, in purity of heart, and with utter devotion to truth. NEW DOMINION STATUS. The revival of the Irish Republican question gives particular interest to a recent lecture on " The New Dominion Status" by Mr. J. H. Morgan, professor of constitutional law in the University of London. He said that unity in the war was achieved without the slightest surrender of the legislative autonomy of tho Dominions. Decisions of the Imperial War Cabinet that necessitated legislation wero implemented bv statute or Order-in-Council by the Dominion concerned. That transient constitutional experiment had its lesson for all who were concerned with the success of tho forthcoming Imperial Conference at Ottawa. If anything approaching fiscal unity within the Empire was to be achieved it could only bo achieved by tho same course of action, constitutionally speaking, as was followed during the war. The necessities of tho "war" of tariffs to-day might make swift, collectivo action by all the communities of the Empire almost equally imperative. Fiscal reciprocity within the Empire might involve tho delegation of powers of united executive action to all tho Governments of tho Empire by their respective Legislatures. What was "Dominion Status" ? In spito of the Statute of Westminster they might search in vain in its text for any legal definition; and if they attempted to deduce from certain sections of the Statute the generalisation that tho Imperial Parliament could no longer legislate for any of the Dominions they would be quite wrong. Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland had "contracted out." of it, and Canada, whilo accepting the application of tho Statute, had obtained the insertion of a section expressly exempting tho Dominion from the power to repeal or amend a certain Imperial Statute known, colloquially, as tho Canadian Constitution. To onJy tho Irish Free State and tho Union of South Africa did the Act apply in its entirety, and if they read the debates in Dublin and Pretoria they would find an extraordinary diversity of opinion as to the repercussions of tho Statute. PLANNING IN INDUSTRY. A year ago planning was a new and startling idea in this country, said Sir Basil Blackett in a lecture on "The World Economic Crisis and the Way of Escape." To-day it had become a cliche and correspondingly devoid of contact to most of us, but he thought it was still true to say thafc rooted as wo were in British traditions of personal and political freedom tho average man and woman among us instinctively distrusted the idea of conscious planning and we trembled for our cherished privileges and liberty when it was suggested that we had something to learn from Italy and Russia. The inmicdiato task to which we should bend all our energies was to prove to ourselves and to the world that planning was conj sis-tent with freedom and freedom with planning. The Prince of Wales was callj ing for planned social effort by tho inI dividual and it was significant that his emphasis laid on the fact that such [ social effort had to bo consciously organised and planned if it was to bo of any use to trie community. First and foremost in tho planning of national reconstruction camo the necessity for a comprehensive insight into and a firm grasp of tlio inter-relationships between the various aspects of our political and economic and social life. Tho Cabinet room in 10, Downing Street, ought to" liavo prominently emblazoned on its walls the Hegelian motto "Tho A [togetherness of Everything." It was a common gibe against the expert that bo knows more and moro about less and less. Ho must in common fairness bo given the opportunity at least of pointing out that tho cleaning up of his field would bo useless or even harmful if thistles continued to flourish in those which lay all round him. Nothing, for example, had been moro heart-rending iii tho past decade than the way in which every kind of effort toward world recovery and reconstruction, both national and international, had been rendered abortive, often after showing great initial promise of success, by the catastrophic fall in tho purchasing power of money. Hero we came to the heart of our present-day problem of a financial and economic crisis brought on not by scarcity but by plenty.