NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22161, 15 July 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SUBURBAN STRAIN An English doctor has recently announced that the most frequent nervous disorders occur in the suburbs, among people "who have just moved up in social life." In these circles, notes the Sunday Times, it seems that the habitual English sang froid is disturbed by "the heat of social jealousies." Keeping up appearances is more of a strain in suburban society than elsewhere, for who, in the indifferent city, notices appearances? Who in the country cares about .them ? And who, in a small village community, can hope to disguise what-is already well known to every member? "Love your neighbours, yet pull not down your hedge," says a proverb dear to Englishmen. But it is when the hedge becomes a suburban fence that the trouble begins. To covet your neighbour's car, bis lawnmower. his wireless set, and the number of his maidservants is not only breaking the Tenth Commandment it may bring on" a nervous breakdown. CANNIBAL CULTURE w All interest in the True, the Beautiful, and the Good having been exhausted in previous ages, writes Mr. Frank Butter in the Sunday Times, it has been reserved for this twentieth century to lavish its admiration 011 the Odd, the Quaint, and the Peculiar. Members of the National Art Collections Fund were shocked recently to learn that the attendance at the National Gallery had fallen from 669,000 in 1928 to 531,000 in 1934, at the Wallace Collection from 131,000 to 75,000 in the same period. It is significant to note, however, that, despite a similar decline at the Tate and the Victoria and Albert, the British Museum has maintained its average figures. This can be attributed—-not indeed to the presence of the Elgin Marbles—but to its fortunate possession of an incomparable collection of Heathen Idols. These are the works of art which attract most strongly the intelligentsia of this twentieth century.

NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS The limitation of the increasingly large number of shopkeepers in Britain was one of the leading questions on the agenda of the Thirtieth Annual Convention of the Stationers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland. Mr. F. C. Guildford, who is this year's chairman of the council, explained the danger to traders of the multiplicity of small shopkeepers. " The convention, he said, "is to urge on the local government authorities the necessity of the limitation of shops. How this is necessary may be gauged by the fact that a town like Kidderminster lias one shop per nine of the population, while at the other end of the scale the County of London, with its 86,647 shops, has a proportion of 1.5 per cent per head of the population. At the moment any man with, say, £IOO capital, can open a stationer's, news-agent's or tobacconist's shop. He has neither experience nor knowledge of the trade, and the consequence is he speedily loses his capital and runs into debt. There are now approximately 964,400 private shops in Great Britain, and this great total, together with the co-operative societies and chain stores, finds this country in the position of having one shop to every 44 inhabitants."

FRENCH POLITICAL WEAKNESS Discussing the recurring crises in France, "Scrutator" asserts in the Sunday Times that the root causes of the trouble are, of course, that for some years the French Government has been borrowing money to pay current expenses, that the interest on this borrowed money now amounts to a colossal sum, that expenditure is rising, and that taxation seems to have reached its limit if we may judge from the fact that increases in a tax have latterly been followed by a diminished yield. It is often said that though the Frenchman is always ready to die for his country, ho is not nearly so keen on paying for its policy. But that is neither a complete nor probably a quite fair diagnosis of the symptoms. The cause is not so much ill the mind of the French taxpayer as in his Parliamentary system. Most of us have been attracted at some time or other by the French system under which a Parliament has a right to serve out its full term. The British Parliament has no such right. If the Government ceases to command a majority, it usually advises the King to dissolve Parliament and there is a general election. But in France Governments conie and go, while Parliament stays for its full term, and, if Parliament disagrees with Government, it is Government, not Parliament, that must adapt itself.

BRITISH FREEDOM Mr. John Buchan, Governor-General-designate of Canada, who has taken the title of Lord Tweedsmuir, pleaded for an ordered world construction and respect for individual liberty when he spoke at a recent dinner of the Canada Club. " The hope of the world," ho said, " lies in its constructive minds — not with the glittering and show.v people, for they only make confusion worse confounded, but with the plain, faithful folk who are determined to build some kind of roof to shelter humanity. That is one 'aspect of the new fortitude which the times demand of a nation. A second demand is that we return to a proper respect for the individual man. We have been apt to make a fetish of the State and society. We have forgotten that the State is not an end in itself, but exists to give the individual a full, a secure and a worthy life. The courage to construct, the insistence that every man shall be able to stand on his own feet and be the master of his soul—these things menu the defence of true democracy. For it is democracy, the every essence of our political faith, that is at issue. The modern State is such a complex affair that there are many pooplo who have come to believe that it cannot be administered on the old lines of personal freedom. They • say that liberty is inconsistent with efficiency. We have seen proud nations lose heart and surrender themselves to a dictator. It is for us to show a better way, to prove to the world that civilisation has twin foundations, and that, if one of them is law, th« other- « Uh^rtsfc 1 '