NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21792, 5 May 1934, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

DISARMAMENT "We have to weigh two risks," writes Sir Norman Angell in the News Chronicle: "Is it better to accept that of giving guarantees and getting armament limitation and some basic international understanding; or that attached to a new race in armaments in which we are free from any pre-commitment P Note that there was no public pre-commitment in 1914. 'Our hands were free.' It is still quite inadequately realised by the British public," he concludes, "that France, the strongest air Power in the world, has offered to scrap her air arm if we internationalise civil aviation and establish a small air police; and has indeed offered to forgo the latter condition if the international control of civil aviation is thoroughgoing enough. It is not France—or for that matter Germany—whigh constitutes the real obstacle to settlement; it is a teetering of the human will duo to confusion of thought, a confusion as rampant in this country as in any. Our first task is to clear it up." SECURITY BY ALLIANCE "Mutual aud reciprocal alliance between Britain and those nearest neighbours whose political lives are inseparable from our own," writes Mr. J. L. Garvin in the. Observer, "would be by far the soundest and surest plan of security for Britain, France, and Belgium alike. All three peoples would draw a deep breath of relief, and the whole atmosphere of European politics would be calmed. But of all the elements entering into this view of security the factor of British parity in air power will be the most essential. Otherwise wo could not make good our present pledges, much less answer for the honest discharge of wider obligations. Above all we. must remember the greatness of German civil aviation, its brilliant technique, its convertibility j to war uses. If the ordeal of war is !

to return at all, this country will never again have that time to muddle through which ;ts vanished insular im-

munity afforded through all the centuries till now. When air squadrons can cross the Channel in live either we shall be equal to others in deterrent force, and known to be as ready oh the first day, or we shall court irretrievable disaster—the fate without a morrow. British guarantees or no convention? It is a choice of risks to be coolly weighed. To limit the risks our guarantees would be bettej concentrated than spread. If Britain will not tie her hands in one way, France will not tie hers in another.' Yet mutual insurance between these two countries is equally vital to both." THE STATE COACHES In Britain we did not want the get-rich-quick mind, said Mr. Baldwin, in a speech on "Political Freedom" that was broadcast to schools. Speed and efficiency had done great things, and they were perhaps the idols of this generation. They did not necessarily go together. Acceleration was not a synonym for civilisation. It was quite true that the State coach in Britain might be going through heavy ground and the wheels might be creaking, but were they sure that the wheels of the coach were not creaking to-day in Moscow, in Berlin, in Vienna? Were they quite certain that they were not creaking even in the United States? "I admit," I continued Mr. Baldwin, "that a dictator can do much when in power. He might do everything. There is one thing he cannot do —create another dictator. A dictatorship is like a giant beech tree; very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it. The whole tendency of it is to squeeze out the competent and independent man and create a hierarchy used to obeying. When the original dictator goes chaos is often the result. We have no hierarchy in this country used to obeying. Our people are independent. They have been accustomed to taking pfp-t in the government of

their country . . . For us to surrender our liberties would indeed be to graft something completely alien on the stem of an old oak. Do not forget that? in spite of what is happening abroad there are freedom-loving men and women in every country to-day in Europe. You cannot think with what anxiety they are looking to this country as the last stronghold of freedom —• standing like a rock in a tide that is threatening to submerge the world."

CHIMPANZEE BRAIN Highly interesting experiments conducted by the Yale University Department of Comparative Psychology have proved that chimpanzees can learn to apply value to "money." In a lecture and display of films before the New York Academy of Sciences Professor Robert M. Yerkes described the unusual "experiments in symbolic reward" which ho and his assistants carried on with a group of chimpanzees between one and six years of age. The chimpanzees had been taught that if they wanted to eat they must have cash, which was represented by different coloured poker chips. By means of automatic selling machines they had been taught that differently coloured chips had different values. The chips were given as pay for pulling weights and levers and were required in payment of such things as liberty to leave the cages, as well as for the purchaso of such delicacies as grapes, oranges, and various drinks. The chimpanzees are willing to work hard to obtain the "money" and quickly learn that to purchaso an orange from a machine requires one white counter, while grapes may bo purchased for tivo, and that drinks are obtainable with green chips. Blue chips will give the apes liberty from their cages and are invariably used when food desires are satisfied. It has been found that, given opportunity, the apes will spend all their money immediately, but that if the selling machines are closed they will guard their wealth carefully. Small "banks" are provided into which the chimpanzees may put their money and they employ them, since they realise that if they try to hide it elsewhere it will be stolen by other monkeys the minute their backs aro turned. Some chimpanzees, according to Dr. Yerkes, try to beg from their more thrifty companions and some, if sufficiently popular, obtain largesse, but ordinarily pleas for loans meet with harsh refusal. Many other tests prove conclusively that monkeys use an intelligence not found in other animals.