NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21324, 27 October 1932, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

"ROUND THE CORNER V Sir Robert Home, M.P., in a speech at Dunblane, Perthshire, expressed his belie! that "our noses are round the corner" and that we had broken away from the worst stages of the world depression. He said that he was in favour of a standard of exchange embracing both gold and silver. More than half of the world's trade was being conducted on British sterling as a measure of value, but in China the standard was silver. It would be of great advantage if all the great trading nations of the world had a measure of value which applied everywhere. America had placed the silver problem upon the agenda of the prospective Monetary Conference, so that it would have due consideration. It was to be hoped that the nations would come to clear and definite conclusions. Referring to the conversion achievement, Sir Robert said that the anticipation of a period of cheap money had already brought a new spirit of confidence into the realm of commerce and industry; and it only required tho clearing up of certain political problems to set the world going again upon a new course of prosperity. In regard to war debts, he said it remained for the nations in Europe which owed war debts to tho United States of America to make a settlement with their creditor. Upon this settlement the future hinged. The conference at Ottawa had brought a new hope and a new prospect to all the countries of the British Commonwealth.

LEAGUE LOANS The League Loans Committee (London), of which the chairman is Sir Austen Chamberlain, has addressed a memorial to the British Government, drawing attention to the present serious position of the loans issued under the auspices of the League of Nations, and asking that the Government move the League to do everything in its power to safeguard the special status of these loans. About seven loans have been issued under the League of Nations, all of them having been raised with the object of furthering the policy of European reconstruction. They were approved in detail by the Council of the League of Nations with the concurrence and support of the British Government, which was at all times represented on the Council, and the very fact that recourse was had to the League shows the difficulty, and, indeed, as the memorial to the Government suggests, practically the impossibility, of making such issues at the time under any other auspices. The committee points out that the British investing public, which subscribed half the total of the League loans (£40,000,000 out of £83,000,000), did so in the faith that, a special security attached to them, and that, having regard to the circumstances of the issue, both the Council of the League of Nations and His Majesty's Government would exercise a special watchfulness in regard to them. "We venture to submit," states the committee, "that His Majesty's Government cannot be indifferent to tho deplorable effect on the influence of the League of Nations, both in financial and in other fields, which must be produced by defaults on these loans, and to the difficulty and even impossibility which such defaults must place in the way of raising any further loans for reconstruction purposes without the guarantee of Governments other than the borrowers." LISTER INSTITUTE Research work whjph, it is hoped, will make plain the relationship between the viruses of small-pox, cow-pox and vaccinia (the human counterpart of cow-pox which appears after vaccination) is proceeding at the Lister Institute, London. As a result, it is hoped to demonstrate that all three viruses aie modifications of a singlo strain, and thus for the first time to show by a laboratory demonstration the effectiveness of vaccination. "I have developed a new test," Dr. C. Russell Amies, a research fellow of tho institute, explained to a representative of tho Morning Post, "in which the minute viruses of small-pox are coagulated into closer masses, although the viruses of vaccinia are not affected. This result does not mean that the viruses are necessarily different, but they must bo taken hi conjunction with another result obtained by Dr. Craigie and Professor Tulloch, who secured evidence that vaccinia and small-pox shared a common antigen, or preventive modification of the virus. The probability is that the viruses of small pox and vaccinia share a common factor, with something else present in one or both cases. For example, smallpox may be vaccinia plus 'X'; or, as with some other bacteria, they may share a common nucleus, which produced the result common to both, while the outer part of the virus is different in the two cases. In any case, it is likely that whatever differences exist will be found to be due to the normal modification of a virus which often takes place when it passes from one species to another. An interesting and important point is the relationship between mild small-pox and genuine Eastern small-pox. So far we have discovered no difference in the behaviour of the viruses, but from a practical point of view one would like to know that the mild virus was never spontaneously modified into the more virulent. There is reason to believe that mild small-pox inoculates against virulent small-pox. So that if modification of that type does not occur there would be something to be said for no longer segregating mild small-pox, but allowing the immunity given by it to spread among the community."