NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21377, 29 December 1932, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE TASKS OF GOVERNMENT Extravagant claims made by some men of science for a special, if not supreme position of power in government were challenged by Professor Alexander Findlay, professor of chemistry at Aberdeen, in an address in Manchester. "One may indeed expect to find agreement among men of science regarding the laws of science, but there is no reason to* expect any unanimity among them in the domain of civil legislation," he said. " The fact is that the task of government is much 100 varied and complicated to be undertaken by any one class of men, and the problems are too great to be solved merely by recognising and emphasising one of the factors in human nature. The scientific is only one part of human nature, and takes no account of personality. The engineer may understand how to build a bridge; it does not follow that he understands how to build character." STIMULUS OF SATIRE The need for satire as a corrective of modern world tendencies was urged by Mr. James Laver, novelist and critic, addressing the Liverpool Round Table. Mr. Laver prescribed satire as a sort of "pick-me-up" for the enfeebled condition of present-day society. As a people.we were becoming terribly soft and extremely touchy. We needed to get back to the early years of the eighteenth century, when satire was in full swing. The ideal satirist was not the man whose satire sprang from hatred of humanity, as in the case of Swift, but the man who loved mankind very much and was yet extremely conscious of the ridiculous- side of human nature. One of the objects to which the modern satirist might direct his shafts was the vociferous effort of minorities to tame the natural man. This was a world of well-intentioned busybodies. Satire could restore to people of that kind and their deluded followers a central view of life, a sense of balance and proportion. Satire was like a draught of quinine, which cleared away the cold in the head caused by wandering too long in the realms of sentimentality. "In the days before us, however dark they may be." added Mr. Laver, " it is more important to think clearly than to have the best intentions in the world." BUILDING RESTRICTIONS The first annual report of the Advisory Council of the Building Industry in Britain, whose purpose is. "to secure the abolition of unnecessary restrictive regulations by-laws that hamper building and establish in their place reasonable conditions which are in consonance with building progress," has been issued. " There was never more need than now to call upon municipal authorities to remove from the building industry every impediment and restrictive regulation or by-law that can possibly be removed without -danger to the public health and safety," it states. "The Advisory Council feels it to be its bounden duty to represent to all authorities controlling the erec* tioii of public or private buildings the necessity of examining their regulations and by-laws with the view of eliminating restrictions „that may have prevented buildings from being started or carried on. They can thus make a valuable contribution to the rehabilitation of British industry, while at the same time engaging on a work of. pressing importance to scientific building development. The advance in building technique and in professional practice no longer warrants the type and form of public control which arose and was perhaps necessary in the period between 1840-1891, during which the roots of modern legislative control of building were planted, aryl the time would appear to have arrived when a greater degree of freedom should be granted to qualified practitioners within the building industry." ■ BANNING THE BOME[ "It seems possible that too much attention has been paid at Geneva to contriving restrictions for "the aeroplane, and too little attention concentrated upon the real evil, which is the bomb," said the Times recently*. "Why should not the bomb, for a start; .be-renounced, solemnly and absolutely by every State in the world, and its manufacture or use lie regarded as an international crime ? It is obvious, of course, that this prohibition could be evaded, because the parts of aerial bombs could be separately made and secretly assembled, but an effective deterrent would certainly be the knowledge that the offending nation would render itself an outlaw and liable, according to a new international code, to reprisal from every other nation. In an ordinary international quarrel there must always be some doubts as to which State was the aggressor, and from which State the real provocation originally came. There would be no such difficulty of definition about the use of aerial bombs. A nation employing them, if they had been condemned by international agreement to rank with the bomb of the anarchist as a dastardly and illegal weapon, would ipso facto constitute itself an outcast. Its neighbours and the other signatories of the Convention would have the right, if not the duty, to take action against it. . . . . The simpler the definition of what is prohibited, the better the chance of enforcing the prohibition. The evil thing is. the air bomb, whether it be filled with high'explosive or poison-gas. Cannot all countries unite to make its prohibition absolute?"