NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21253, 5 August 1932, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

DEPARTMENTAL SPENDING Were not taxes imposed to the extent that essential saving was unduly discouraged ? Was taxation taking forms, which were dangerously depleting capital resources ? Was valuo for money being obtained in tho social services ? Was a sufficiently long view being taken in the whole field of public finance? These questions were raised in a recent speech by Sir Harold Bellman. The British Civil Service was frequently held up to admiration, ho said, but there was a feeling that it was not providing the mast economical administration that was possible. Ho doubted whether the doctrino of the inexhaustible public purse had yet been exorcised from tho. minds of the spending departments. The inborn tendency of the Civil Service continually to pass responsibility upwards was a prolific source of waste. Comparatively minor questions which would bo decided in a matter of minutes in private business occupied many weeks in Whitehall. Nor could it be maintained that tho higher staff was worked to maximum capacity so long as officers were entitled to leave which was equal to one-sixth of tho working year. ECONOMIC OR POLITICAL Writing in the News-Letter, the organ of th© National Labour Party, Sir Norman Angoll says: —"Suppose the Argentine or one of the Scandinavian States says to us in effect: 'We are thinking of creating a native industry with the help of a new tariff, building at homo ships which, heretofore, we have bought from the Tyne; of erecting iron works, producing material which, heretofore, we have bought in Middlesbrough. But we will not erect this new tariff and start these new competing industries if we can secure a market for our primary products with you, and as a means of coming to this bargain, by which wo shall take the products of your industry and you will take our agricultural products, we formally apply for admission into tho circle of British Imperial Preferences. We will grant you every preference which any of your Dominions grant. Wo ask to become, not a member of tho political empire (which, of course, in the case of Argentina would raise Monroe Doctrino complications), but a member of the economic empire, and we are, in effect, offering you far more favourable terms than have been offered so far by any member of your political empire, the chief units of which have been increasingly shutting out your products, and threaten to do so still more, as in tho case of the Irish Free State, Canada, Australia and South Africa.' Just that sort of proposal has., in fact been very much discussed of late in Denmark and tho other Scandinavian States. Are wo to be free in the future to accept this most advantageous addition to our economic empire, assuming that the new type of economic imperialism and mutual preferences becomes a permanent part of our policy ? If we are not iree to accept the offer then we are not applying tho policy of economic preference; and are piling barriers against our trade where wo might pull them down." MAN AND HIS MACHINES In "Man and Technics," Professor Oswald Spengler protests against utilitarian philosophy. Herbivorous animals uso tho defensive means of scent; carnivores the aggressive means of sight; man alone adds tho hand—tho instrument which grasps tho tools which it makes. This is tho peculiar grandeur of man, that he fights Nature with tho weapons of his own conscious choice. Out of his knowledge of his freedom comes his soul, but, as Professor Spengler sees it, says the Times, the soul is but tho central character of man's tragedy. Tho catastrophe works out somewhat as follows: — Mail's tools cannot be used effectively ' without conscious planning. Hence arise the spirit of enterprise which devises commands and tho instrument of language whicli issues them. There thus develops a social organisation of mankind into tho few leaders and tho many led. But, as society becomes more highly organised, tho individual protests against the limitations which it imposes on his own personality. Thus wo find man rebelling against his own social purposes. Moreover, tho ablest minds realise tho futility of tho enterprise which they alone can direct. Each achievement reveals many unsatisfied possibilities. Nature is never conquered; but man's apparent conquests recoil on his own head, as when his new I electrical knowledge destroys his older s economy bused on coal. To-day man is ■ caught in his own net. "We think only ' in horse-power now; wo cannot look at a 1 waterfall without mentally turning it into electric power; wo cannot survey a counj 1 trysido full of pasturing cattlo without thinking of its exploitation as a sourco 1 of meat-supply; wo cannot look at the 1 beautiful old handwork of an unspoilt I primitive people without wishing to replace it by a modern technical process." , In this last fact lies disaster; for while , the leaders of mankind are abandoning the , battlo and coming to terms with nature, . the led, the servants of machines, find i, that they aro unable to live because they > have imparted their skill to tho races i which they had regarded aa their in- : feriors.