NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

TARIFFS TO REDUCE TARIFFS Mr. T. P. Barlow, president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, in a recent address said that though there were particular justifications for tariffs in a national emergency, there appeared to be other and deeper justifications. They in Great Britain must be realists. If economic nationalism was to prevail they must of necessity follow suit, for they had no special strength in a world of tariffs to dispense with tariffs. He believed they could use tariffs and even allow themselves a moderate amount of economic protection without committing the folly of going (o those extremes that had brought the world to its present position. But they must beware of confused thinking about the object of tariffs, and realise that some industries might lose their right to live. If British industry generally got into the frame of mind in which it Telied upon the height of its tariff wall regardless of its competitive efficiency Britain's future in world export markets would not be a very glorious one. The chief object of their tariff policy must be to effect reductions in tariffs elsewhere. TIDE DEFINITELY TURNED . Speaking recently of a "three years' plan" of reconstruction in Britain, Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, M.P., said they were sometimes criticised because the country was not already enjoying prosperity. Such criticism reflected more on the. intelligence of the. man who made it than on those against whom it was levelled. For example, abnormal importations of goods were bound to occur when it was believed that a tariff was to be imposed. stocks of goods were Hastily rushed into the country at the last moment. The effect- of tariffs was thus delayed, but it was not destroyed. They could not have a returil of full prosperity until tho world improved. The most they could hope to do by their first year's work wag to steady affairs at home, and that had been done. In the yorld as a whole conditions had grown worse during the last year. In Britain the downward course of trade had been checked. The ebb had ceased; the tide had just turned—a very little, but still quite definitely turned. Whether that improvement would continue, and at what speed, depended on how they could influence the world outside. What was most significant of all was that while the whole volume of production was still decreasing in other countries, in Britain alone it had turned the corner, and was increasing. So they could take heart.

THE GOOD AND BAD IN BOOKS Tn the " Anatomy of Bibliomania," Mr. Holbroek Jackson writes as follows in a chapter entitled " Of Poisonous Books" : Books are like food, every article of which has its poison: Ihc peach with its prussic acid, tho pie-plant with its oxalic acid, tea with its tannic acid, the tomato and even the potato, each with its own deleterious ingredient, point at dangers which we must conquer or starve;'and just as we conquer these poisons by a judicious internal selection, an instinctive cunning, r.o we must learn to digest what is good for us in books and eject what is bad; remembering always that no garden is so well tilled, but some noxious weeds grow up in it; no wheat, but it hath some tares: and there be some men, so Ben Jonson argues, born only to suck poison out of books: Habent venenum prov ictu; imo pro deliciis. Not all men can read all books with impunity, even the strongest minds having their limits of resistance. One bad ode may be suffered, said Dr. Johnson, but a number of them together makes one sick. Coventry Patmore was nearly lost by reading Blanco White, and wonders lie did not commit suicide during the .three months of despairing atheism induced by it. Yet although one man's book is another's poison, tho power of books in generating virtue is probably, as William Godwin speculated, much greater than in generating vice; an argument which is supported by other observers as well as by common sense, for if there be any virtuo in virtue, any power to defend itself, which, in spite of the doubts of faint-hearted moralists, I believe there is, then I say that the last word will be with the good book against, the bad, and tho permanence of its effect will be the test, of its goodness, however poisonous it may be called by those with an axa to grind. Virtua redeems itself by reason of its virility