NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21468, 17 April 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

INDIVIDUAL EFFORT Lord Cecil of Chelwood, in a rocent speech, said ho thought there had been a great movement during the last generation for the substitution of co-opera-tion for competition as an instrument ot social progress. Although tho tendency toward co-operation was on tho whole a good thing, let them not ignore certain dangers which it involved. The more they substituted co-operative effort for individual effort, the more risk there was of the weakening of individuality, that was to say, they risked the loss of initiative and enterprise in the individual. It was a real danger, although he was not at all pessimistic on the subject. Human responsibility was tho greatest thing in tho world, and in politics it was absolutely essential to the proper working of any democratic, any popular institution. There was no department of politics in which it was more essential that the citizens of a country should think for themselves than in foreign affairs. THE RACE OF LIFE " Self-belief is a basic necessity to the happy life. It is very different from conceit, which is merely a cardinal illusion about one's innate capacities," writes Sir Herbert Barker in the Daily Mail. " The wise man tells himself that his chances are as good as another's. He reminds himself that what he sees of the lives of his fellow-men are merely the externals. For the rich man he envies may have a life devoid of the very thing he craves —love; and a poor man may bo rich in that. So it seems to mo we should first recognise our handicaps and then accept them and enter tho race. There is only ono sin; it is to decline battle. Most of our battles rago unseen in our hearts, and somo never come to an issue at all. I believe that failure should be an exceptional thing, that many who have failed could still convert failure to success. On the running track a handicap calls forth tho last ounce of dogged will in the handicapped;' It should bo like that in life. A handicap, whatever its nature, should bo a challenge to battle." HOUSE OF COMMONS Speaking as the guest of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, Mr.' Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that there had been changes in the House of Commons, yet he fancied that in essence the House of Commons remained always the same. It seemed somehow to have the gift of assimilating into itself all newcomers, however rebellious, however revolutionary they might be when they first entered its portals. There was no place where a man so quickly found his level. There was no body which was so intolerant as the House of Commons of any pretension or so appreciative of sincerity. The House of Commons aroused affection in the minds not only of members, but of those associated with it, and members of" the House felt that the occupants of the Press Gallery were part of that great historic institution which commanded their devotion. They were convinced that the men in the Press Gallery cared as much as they themselves did for its dignity and its good name, and that, whatever they might feel it necessary to say about Parliamentarians, the reputation of the House of Commons itself would never suffer at their hands. CREDIT AND CONFIDENCE Referring to inflation at a farewell gathering in London, Mr. A. W. Mellon, tho American Ambassador, said it was impossible to carry out voluntarily an orderly or controlled inflation, and all proposals to that effect were worse than useless. Inflation, as he understood it, was tho expansion of the total supply of credit instruments out of i proportion to the volume of bona-fide productive business being carried on at the time. Tho financial system would not absorb the new credits unless there wero commercial or industrial opportunities which held out the promise of profit. When this happened thero was an expansion of the total amount of credit in use, and not before; but this, needless to say, could not be done by artificial means or in accordance with preconceived plans. What was needed now would seem to be not so much an increase in the amount of credit or money available as a revival of business activity based upon confidence that goods and services would soon be in demand, and that a state of balance would again be achieved in the various economic relationships between groups of individuals with i something to buy and something to sell to each other. When that would be he did not know, but ho had lived through similar crise3 in the seventies and the nineties, when he heard predictions of disaster just as at present, and when he saw such predictions followed in the United States by a speedy and complete recovery. Tho day of miracles might be over, perhaps; but where America was concerned many things were possible that could not be done elsewhere. Certainly one would be very rash indeed to disbelieve in the future of a country in possession of the territory, the climate, the raw materials and the industrious population which went to make up tho United 1 States.