NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NATION CHOSEN BY GOD "We niny believe," said the Dean of St. Paul's, London, in a recent speech, "that our nation is in a truo sense chosen by God, while believing that other nations are also olK>sen. We can believe that the British Empire has been chosen for a special mission. It appears to me to be in course of providing the outline of an all-inclusive League of Nations in tho future, creating an organisation in which freedom is combined with unity, and proving that loyalty to a central shrine can exist along with the most complete self-determination of the nations who combine to form tho whole. If that idea could be extended to include all the nations of the world the great problem of war and peace would ho on the way to a. settled solution."

BIRD PRESERVATION Commenting on the petition which the Scottish Society for the Protection of Wild Birds has brought forward, asking for a year's truce in the caging and capturing of wild birds, the Listener remarks that this is one mote example of the growing realisation that conscious steps have to be taken in the British Isles if many species of birds already rare are not to become extinct. The whole question of bird protection is one in which Britain can claim to have taken the lead. To-day most countries have societies for the protection of birds, and have paused legislation establishing close seasons, or in other ways affording protection. It is nearly GO years since the body now so well known as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was founded primarily to combat tho evils of tho plumage traffic. From that obvious beginning many activities have grown, both nationai and international. Much of tho work of bird preservation only requires money. Thus the equipment of lighthouses with perches has been found to save a great deal of bird life, preventing birds from injuring and killing themselves by dashing against the lighthouse in a vain search for somewhere to perch. This form of protection requires neither legislation nor education. At the other end, the attempts to secure, through the League of Nations, international action to minimise the discharge of oil from oilburning vessels' in a form which makes it a peculiarly destructive agent for birds, is, like all international matters, a lengthy business of slowly maturing agreement. In between these two extremes lies the great field in which public opinion and public education are the chief factors. MEDICAL PROGRESS To have lived tho more active part of one's life within the first 25 yejirs of the present Georgian era, observing and sharing, in however humble a degree, its manifold changes and reactions, confers on review a deep sense of privilege, writes Dr. John A. Ryle. Physician to His Majesty's Household and to Guy's j Hospital, in the Lancet. For medicine j it has been an eventful era. lhe modi- j cal sciences, in concert with other sci- , ences, have registered a proud succes- j sion of discoveries, while medical prac- j tice has been both enriched and embar- ( rassed by tho rapidity of progress andaccuniulations of new method. 1 am grateful to have lived and to have been taught in that easier (pre-war) period by men trained in the tradition of the physician-pathologists for which my school is famous, and I still believe, as they believed, that tho bedside, tho outpatient department, the dead-house and the practice which comes later must continue to provide tho chief foundations of our medical art. Ihe problems of man in disease will always require for their solution processes additional to strict scientific assessment. I commiserate the present generation of students on the score of the size and complexity of their curriculum and the difficulties which they must experience in combining and applying their departmental knowledge. I envy them, on tho other hand, for their superior endowments in chemical understanding and for the inspirations of the times in which they live. Between them they have already witnessed the introduction of insulin and liver therapy; tho much more effective handling of tho secondary anaemias; the more certain and earlier recognition and control of many diseaseprocesses with the aid of blood chemistry; the more intelligent applications of psychology, supplanting the electricity, bromide and valerian of an earlier day; and many advances due to better medico-chirurgical co-operation.

THE TERRITORIAL ARMY The value of territorial training to both the nation and the individual was stressed by Lord Hewart, Lord Chief Justice of England, in opening a drill hall for the sth Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. Thero must be scores of men in Radcliffe, ho said, of whom it could truly bo said, "It will bo.good for the army if they join it, and it will be good for them if they join the army." They could recall the penetrating words of Samuel Johnson, "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier." Ho would say that thero was nothing better for their minds and bodies than the exercise, training, the discipline, and the good fellowship which the army offered them. They remembered the incalculable service rendered to this country by the territorials in the Great War, and they recognised the paramount importance of the Territorial Army in peace as a disciplined unit of men prepared to defend their country. "It might perhaps have been expected in some quarters, after the horrors, the suffering, and the squalor of the war," Lord Hewart continued, "that men and women had at length been tempted to modify some of the old ideals which are contained and united in the word patriotism. But it is not so. To-day, amid all the follies, the perplexities, the jealousies, and the fears which have inado it possible for Europe onco again to be whispering a threat of war, it is a belief, as widely and as deeply held as ever it has been in the history of the world, that when his country is in danger the good man offers to go to her defence. The pity of it is that, while tho desire for peaoe is said to be almost universal, the fear of w#r is still manifestly clouding tho minds of men. May we not, must wo not, hope that sanity will prevail? May we not trust that tho causes of war will bo removed by a peaceful adjustment of the claims of nations? And yet if the call to duty comes, who will deny that it must be immediately answered?"