NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21163, 21 April 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

FRENCH SURTAX. According to the President of the Board of Trade, 60 per cent, or more of Britain's trade with France is now free from surtax. Among the United Kingdom goods of which the exports to France are substantial and are still subject to the surtax are machinery, iron and steel and manufactures thereof, woollen and worsted piece goods, motor vehicles and parts, cotton yarns and piece goods, fish, leather and leather goods, and electrical goods and apparatus. The British Government has made it clear that its objection to the surtax is one of principle and that the question of its removal is one which will have to be included in any future negotiations with the French Government. SCIENTIFIC HUMOUR.

"The public was never more interested in food questions than it is to-day, but its attention is concentrated on the vitamins and hormones," said Sir J. CrichtonBrowne, the nonagenarian, in an amusing speech at a recent London meeting. "The discovery of these was a momentous advance," he said, "and they are of the utmost importance in connection with growth, tooth-formation, and the treatment of several diseases, but there is a tendency in some quarters to magnify their role, and I have seen references to the part the hormones plav in the emotional life which might suggest that they were capable of superseding the functions of the higher nervous systems, so that some day it maybe possible, for prudential motives, surgically to remove the brain as a rudimentary and superfluous organ, just like the appendix, and it must be admitted that in some folks, like the appendix, it would never be missed."

EMPIRE PREFERENCE. " Each of the Dominions, before putting up proposals at Ottawa, will have to consider its own fundamental national policy, its relations with third parties, its internal political situation," says Round Table. " The scope of preference, or other methods of expanding trade (of which tariff preference is plainly only one) is thus somewhat limited, and can not, indeed, be clearly delineated until policies are determined and technical details more fully explored." Summing up what seems to bo the fundamentals of any system of Imperial trade regulation, including preference, which is to be of lasting value, the journal says:—"lt must take into account the fundamental economic policies of the participants, including the balance between their industry and agriculture, and their commercial relations with the rest of the world. Once tlioso essentials have been determined, it should imply a progress toward a lowering of tariffs and the breakdown of economic nationalism generally; it must expand rather than diminish the volume of world trade. While for the lime being it may injure third parties, it must not bo directed against them, and must lcavo them an opportunity of participating in preferential advantages in exchange for equivalent undertakings. It must not be of such complication or duration as to tie the hands of any party unduly in its trading relations either within or outside the Commonwealth. Above all, it must he based on the principle of mutual advantage and free consent." THE POUND TOO HIGH.

Addressing his constituents, Sir Robert Home said that the recent increase in the exchange value of sterling was at once a tribute and an embarrassment— a tribute because it indicated the surpassing confidence of the world in Britain, an embarrassment because it introduced an upsetting factor in a monetary situation which for some time had been comparatively stable. Foreign speculators, taking the view that the British pound would steadily increase in value, were buying British pounds with avidity and leaving their money hero. "This is bad money for us to harbour, and precarious to hold. It might depart as its precursors did last year at a moment when it ill suited us. In the meantime it does us the disservice of forcing our pound up to an artificial level." Once they were off the gold standard it was obviously expedient to let the pound fall till it assumed the level at which they could conduct international trade with profit and support the burden of debt. Any increase in the value of the pound which by speculation or otherwise raised it above its true trading value created a check and impediment to every manufacturer in the country and increased the burden of the taxpayer in tho payment of the interest due on the colossal sum of War debt. It was above all tilings incumbent on those who managed the country's finances to counteract by every means in their power all such subversive tendencies. -"I do not hesitate to say that the pound to-day is too high. We are a trading nation. We can only survive by trade. We are in a position to choose our course. With a pound at an appropriate level we not only help our export trade, but we make it possible for our debtors to pay their debts, and we assist those who with us are off tho gold standard to buy our goods. Rightly guarded, we are in a position to become the centre of a great area of the world trading on a sterling basis nnd pouring new life blood into the. commerce of tho nations."