NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21328, 1 November 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

IRELAND'S LOST CHANCE "Our policy,•' said Mr. V/. T. Co:-- j grave, former President of the Irish Free I State, in a recent speech, "is that the | , land annuities were, according to law and j justice, properly due to those who lent j the money to the farmers who par- j r:based this land. We want good wsl! j and preference in the British market to 1 secure a ready sale for oar goods. Can j it be secured ? Would negotiations to { that end receive favourable consideration ? | We have it on the authority of British j Cabinet Ministers that they are desirous j of a settlement. The time is surely , ripe for the great voice of the people | to ring oat: Let as get down to busi- j ness.' " The material loss and spiritual | degradation in which the nation had ; been involved by the incompetent man- | ncr in which every item of the land an- ! nuities had been handled by the Gov- j eminent was now apparent. If every- j tiling worked out as the signs foretold they would find themselves in the new j vear with the British market regulated j by one group of preferences very de- , cisivelv in favour of the Dominions, and j by a second smaller preferential tariff j still decidedly in favour of Denmark, and , the Argentine. The Free State could not j be found in either of the.<e categories. In ! that trade race they would be among the j ''also rans." The Ottawa Conference, he j said, presented the chance of a nation s j lifetime. For the first time a Government i of the British people had been found j willing to impose preferences against } foreign foodstuffs. To this conference the Government decided to send an Irish delegation. They went unprepared and returned empty-handed. Not merely had they failed to influence the course of the conference in favour of the Free State, but, worse still, they did not prevent it running definitely against their country to its immediate harm and prospectively to its permanent injury. EMPIRE AND MIGRATION " Even a cursory study of the rate of growth of population in all the Dominions will suffice to show that, without immigration, none of them is likely to attain, within measurable time, more than a fraction of the numbers which their area and natural resources would enable them to support," says the Morning Post. "No statesman or economist would contest the j assertion that neither Canada nor Aas- ; tralia would be over-populated at, say, j thirty millions each. \et at the rate of j progress maintained in the past quarter of a century it would take Canada more than a century and Australia more than two centuries to reach those figures. New Zealand would take three or four centuries to attain even ten millions. The argument is sometimes heard in those countries that the restriction of numbers enables each member of the community to share a larger proportion of the wealth that is produced. Any such argument is completely belied by (he history of this country during the last century, when llio increase of individual wealth far outran the phenomenal increaso in population. There is, of course, a limit to the economic increaso of population in proportion to area and natural resources, and wo have for some time overstepped that limit. But the Dominions, especially in theso days of mass production, remain far behind it. All their equipment, railways, telegraphs and so forth, could be much more intensively used by double or treble the population with comparatively little extra outlay. And their factories could substantially reduce costs and therefore raiso output if they were producing for larger home markets. Is it not therefore in the common interest alike of tho Dominions and of the Mother Country to promote the flow of population from where it is excessive to where it is deficient? And if it is, is not now the timo to prepare in this direction for tho new era of prosperity of which the basis has just been laid at Ottawa ?" INDIA AND EASTER ISLAND In a letter to the Times Sir Denison Ross says: "A most interesting communication was made to tho Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lcttres in Paris by tho famous sculptor and scholar, Professor Paul Pelliot, on a recent discovery in connection with the ancient seal inscriptions found by Sir John Marshall in the Indus Valley at Mohenjo and Ilarappa. These remains belong to a civilisation which on archaeological grounds must go back at least to the. third millennium B.C. Among other objects found were a number of seals bearing signs which obviously belong to a script. The reading of theso signs has given rise to much controversy, but hitherto no satisfactory solution has been arrived at, although many of tho signs bear a, striking resemblance to tho primitive signs found on tho early Sumerian seals, which are quite ixitellipiblo to scholars. All that has been established is a close intercourse between Sumeria and the Indus Valley about 3000-2500 B.C. M. Guilliaume Heresy, a learned Hungarian resident in Paris, has now made a very remarkable discovery, which, though it does not throw any light on tho interpretation of the Indus script, raises a new problem regarding its origin. About 60 years ago Father Eyraud, a French missionary, discovered in the Eastei Island an unknown style of writing, which appears not only on tablets of hard wood, but also on weapons and on the collars worn bv chiefs. Now the signs of this writing hear the most astonishing similarity to the signs which occur on the Indus Valley seals, while some occur in Proto-Elamic of Susa, but not in the Indus seals. Professor Paul Pelliot, in his report of M. lievesy's discovery, was able to show 150 examples of the most striking resemblances. Even the svastika appears among them." The Times prints comparative specimens of these scripts.