NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21279, 5 September 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SUNDAY HIKING Sunday hiking was attacked by Dean Johnson in a recent sermon at Newcastle. Men and nations, he said, were now called upon to build a new world, but instead of the constructive spirit, there was too often seen a reckless breaking of traditions on the one hand and sullen revolt against moral rules and restraints on the other. The organising of hiking expeditions on Sundays was a specific instance. Hiking might be an innocent, happy recreation, and a healthy exercise, but Trhen it was conducted on Sunday, it had to be weighed alongside of other vitally important considerations. He believed that every right-thinking person would agree that the way in which the religious associations of Sunday were being obliterated was to be deplored. He had no desire to force religion or religious observance upon people who did not want them, but he felt that Church people should oppose the needless desecration of Sunday. He was not one who would favour the attempt to bolster up religious traditions by legal enactment, but he did say that Australians had a right to demand that Governmenal Ministers should avoid policies that must inevitably have a deteriorating effect upon the moral and spiritual welfare of the people.

PERMANENT PEACE "I believ© that, if civilisation can so long survive the dangers that beset it, within 30 years war will be renounced in practice as it has already been renounced in promise," said Sir Robert Garran, K.C., formerly Commonwealth Solicitor-General, in an address to Sydney students. "It seems that we have already got a long way along the road to the judicial or arbitral settlement of international disputes. Nearly all the nations in the world have pledged themselves to adopt peaceful means for settling their disputes. All the machinery is there ready for use. The Permanent Court of International Justice is there, not only ready, but regularly functioning. It would be rash to say that these solemn agreements have ended war. It is possible, at any moment, that a nation may, either of calculated purpose or at the urge of popular passion, tear up these scraps of paper and resort to war. But the existence of these solemn pledges makes it much more difficult and more dangerous for any nation to take that course. War will only become impossible when the will to war no longer prevails—when the rule of reason is so firmly implanted in men's minds that, for fear of public opinion, at home and abroad, no war lord, executive, Parliament or people will dare to commence hostilities. The issue rests with the moral sense of mankind. The advance in that moral sense, within the memory of this generation, has been great." Formerly, he said, the world of nations was a world of bullies, and diplomacy aimed at a precarious peace by combination to prevent any one of them, or any gang of them, becoming cock of the walk. In the I9th century something like an international conscience began to develop. Under the system of arbitration many treaties were made, although most of them left loopholes. In 1899 a Permanent Court of International Arbitration was established, but up to the Great War only 11 cases had been submitted to it. After the war the Court of International Justice was established.

RATIONALISING INDUSTRY "Industrial rationalisation for Australia needs to be concerned as much about the optimum distribution of overseas and local service of the iniernal market as it does about structural and technical questions," said Dr. F. R. ,E. Mauldon, in a paper read before the Science Congress in Australia. Rationalisation, as a movement toward elemination of redundant productive capacity within industries, implied increased and more deliberate concentration, both primary and secondary. The possibility of increased concentration and control of productive capacity would be conditioned by factors peculiar to each industry. In Australia further primary concentration in all the industries which had exhibited it already in considerable degree would first be countered by geographical requirements. In most cases there was the desirability of having plants, in view of transport costs, at points most convenient for the distribution of the product throughout several metropolitan or large town centres and the territory most readily served by them. This would apply more particularly to woollen and tweed mills, chemical fertiliser works, and, to a less extent, to boot and shoe factories, biscuit? factories, match factories and jam factories. Other industries would find themselves obliged to have plantß at separated sources of their raw materials. This would apply particularly to coalmines, metal extraction works, tinned meat and meat freezing works, canned fruit factories, timber mills, butter and cheese factories, dried fruit gradiftg, processing and packing sheds and factories, and other such industries. In spite of these geographical requirements, there was evident scope for elimination of redundant units, particularly with boot and shoe factories, coalmines, timber mills, butter factories and dried fruit packing sheds*