NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21327, 31 October 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FISCAL DOGMATISM "In selecting the Ottawa agreements as the seed for dissensions in the Government, the executive of the National Liberal Federation have been as ill-ad-vised in their choice of an instrument as in their choice of an occasion," says the Times. "Since the various party leaders put forward their election manifestos and since the later 'agreement to differ' no Minister can pretend that his colleagues have either tricked or bullied him in the matter of fiscal policy; and differences upon fiscal policy have ceased to be a sufficient reason for resignation. There has nover been a whisper of any differences in the Cabinet except upon fiscal policy; and it is difficult to see how the Ottawa agreements import anything now even into fiscal controversy. It might have been hoped, therefore, that devotion to one side or the other of the fiscal issue might have ceased to bo the touchstone of a statesman's usefulness to his country — whether in his own or in his party's opinion. If fiscal dogmatism, so long the curse of British politics, is to be revived as the line of division in this nation at the very moment when the best hope of solving a host of problems lies in national unity, those responsible for the attempt, whether they are successful or not, will have much to answer for to a far wider audience than their own party."

RESPONSIBILITY OF FLYING "Mr. George Hutchinson and his family and crew have been rescued from the lonely fiord on the coast of Greenland where they had been marooned since the wreck of their machine; and we are glad that they have had such & fortunato escape," says the Morning Post. " Their attempt to fly the Atlantic is the first—and we hope the last —in which children of too tender an age pcoperly to appreciate the risks involved have participated. That aspect of the flight is a matter for the conscience of the parents, but there is another aspect of flights of this kind which is apt to bo forgotten in the relief and excitement of rescue: they may expose hundreds of others to risks, trouble and expense beyond the normal hazards of the sea. On this occasion, for example, three trawlers were diverted from their lawful occasions to search a dangerous coast amid floating ice. The search was conducted, and tho rescue effected, in accordance with the finest traditions of British seamanship, and those responsible deserve the highest praise. We trust that they will also receive adequate compensation for the loss of time and fuel. Other ocean flights have diverted great liners from their courses at enormous cost to the owners and with great inconvenience to passengers. For airmen to run the risk of producing such situations, merely as a 'stunt' to get personal publicity and with no serious thought of advantage to aviation, is more than selfishness —it is an abuse of the fine traditions of life-saving at sea."

TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS Proposals for a new constructive policy in the treatment of offenders are made by Dr. Grace W. Pailthorpe in a report on stildies in the psychology of delinquency issued by the Medical Research Council. Dr. Pailthorpe made her investigations while receiving a x-esearch grant from the council on the recommendation of their Committee on Mental Disorders. The investigations were concerned with the female inmates of prisons in one group and with inmates of preventive and rescue homes for girls and young women in another. One hundred cases were studied in each investigation. The Medical Research Council state that, while the author of tho report is personally responsible for the presentation of her results, and for the opinions which she rests upon them, the gravity and urgency of tho social problems discussed will be universally admitted. Mental imbalance was evident, it is stated, in a large proportion of the cases reviewed, and there were 111 out of 200 for whom psychological treatment in one form or other is considered necessary. This figure excludes mental defectives and constitutional inferiors for whom segregation or supervision is described as also necessary. Dr. Pailthorpe suggests four methods of dealing with offenders. These are segregation, permanent or temporary; permanent supervision without loss of freedom; education; and psychotherapy. Those coming under tho first two headings would, ipso facto, be incurable from tho point of view of making them normal social units, but the treatment would render them innocuous, or nearly so, to their fellows.

METHODISM AND ITS MISSION The formal union of the three Methodist Churches was followed by the Uniting conference at Centisal Hall, Westminster, where Dr. Scott Lidgett delivered his presidential address. In the course of it he said the end of their evangelism was to bring about the perfect love of God and the perfect love of man. It had been said that Methodism had failed to give adequate expression to the doctrine of perfect love; but it must bo remembered that, simultaneously with the rise of Methodism, there also arose the industrial revolution, marked by an intense individualism and a pervasive practical materialism. It carried profound economic, social, and political consequences in its train; it came at a time when democracy was still unborn, when science was in its infancy, and men were ignorant of the vital causes at work in the community and unable either to forecast or to deal adequately with the inevitable consequences of the movement that was taking place. There was an English society which had a traditional dislike of political interference with personal life, and which entirely lacked administrative local authority. All that combined to magnify the social evils of the industrial revolution. Human sympathy was greatly lacking, and tho callousness of those times struck us with pain and shame. The industrial revolution affected Methodism in a twofold and divisive way. The selfcontrol, thrift, and energy which attended the revival brought Methodists to tho front in all the industrial advances. These also provoked a counter social and political revolution which was the dawn of the now dominant democracy. Behind the ecclesiastical divisions of Methodism lay that deep economic and political fissure. The doctrine of perfect lovo was then too fitfully presented and too subjectively held to become predominant, even in Methodism, and it therefore failed to influence powerfully the community at large. But now was the time, by the blessing of God, to revive tho pursuit of the perfect lovo of God. Their proclamation of this doctrine, if lived out and fearlessly expressed, would give Methodists to-day a magnificent opportunity.