NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22167, 22 July 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE KING AND THE SABBATH The Rev. A. C. Deane, Canon of Windsor and chaplain to the King, recently drew attention to the King s keenness on Sunday observance. "Among the great benefits of the last twenty-five years." he said, addressing a meeting in London of the Imperial Alliance for the Defence of Sunday, "is the religious example which the King and his family have set to the land, and not the least has been that example in respect of Sunday. If people would like to oberve the Silver Jubilee in the best possible manner. I do not think that they could set themselves to do it better than by imitating more closely than at present many of them do the example of His Majesty in regard to the observance of Sunday." The Marquess of Aberdeen, who presided, said that the King had set a wonderful example. "Even last Sunday (June 2), when the King was not allowed to go out," he added, "he attended the House of God. 1 know personally that whenever the King is on his one holiday of the year in Scotland, he regularly attends the parish church." GIRLS' SCHOOL UNIFORMS Girls' schools throughout Britain are reported to be considering the introduction of brighter uniforms for their pupils. "There has been a tremendous move in this direction recently," the i headmistress of a leading girls' school j said, "and there is no doubt that brighter colours, shorter sleeves and dresses which give the girls more freedom are the tendency to-dav." A different opinion is expressed by another headmistress, who said: "The great advantage of uniform for a girls' school is that, while all the pupils look businesslike, there can be no competition between them in matters of dress. Uniforms are more economical than ordinary dresses; they do not vary, with the fashion, and their use avoids the possibility of wealthy pupils being better dressed than those whose families are less well off. There is no doubt that some kind of uniform is desirable in most schools, but I entirely agree that many of them might well be improved. One or two schools lately have allowed their girls to wear shorts for games, but this is an innovation which seems unlikely to be widely favoured." SHAVIAN SNAP JUDGMENTS Upon his return to London from South Africa last month Mr. George Bernard Shaw delivered the following characteristic snap judgments:—Parliamentary Government: The British system does not mean self-government, but no government—l mean, as compared with the tasks Governments have to face nowadays. Socialist Governments: For anything our Socialist Cabinets were able to do with the Parliamentary machine they might have bejfi a collection of retired colonels—rand if they had been they might have been much more intelligent. Dictators: The whole secret of Hitler and Mussolini is that they have the gumption to see that political issues which used to take 30 years to solve must now be solved at once. We are still going on with the 19th-century twaddle about liberty and freedom of this, that and the other. Mussolini is a great psychologist, a thing of which our statesmen have no notion whatever. He understands the state of mind of the people of Italy and that is the secret of his success. FARMERS HURT BY TARIFFS The harm done to farmers by excessive tariffs is brought out in a report of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations. The report does not recommend any complete return to free trade, btat points out that excessive protection sows the seed of its own undoing. "Over-protection inevitably leads to over-production," says the report in a memorable phrase. The home farmers begin to produce to excess in the shelter of such tariff walls, and then the whole machinery of protection begins to collapse, internal prices drop, consumption does not then respond because the consumers have become too impoverished to buy or the goods are still too dear, and then every kind of artificial method is resorted to in the hope of saving the situation, only to make things worse. The national economic system thus affected begins progressively to decline. The argument for artificially encouraging excessive home production as a national defence method in time of war is described as a praiseworthy desire, but one which does not work in practioe, for immediately war is declared so many men are taken from the land to join the colours that there are insufficient to maintain the food production level of peace time and food must be imported. This was so in 1914. CURRENCY STABILISATION Many of the worst restrictions on trade are imposed, not for protective reasons to help an industry, but for financial reasons to protect a currency, remarks Sir William Beveridge, the eminent economist, in the Listener. So that stabilisation of currencies is not an academic question; it is a real need. And, recognising that, there are two things to say about it. First, it is not, he believes, practical to think of stabilisation except on a basis of gold; nor is there any good reason for rejecting gold. The root of the serious money difficulties of the past has not been gold, but credit. Second, stabilisation cannot be done by one country alone; it needs agreement, and agreement based on a real desire to rebuild international trade. That is the crucial question. So far as one can judge from recent official statements, there is nothing whatever to suggest that the United States is yet thinking internationally again or is ready to make those changes of financial and tariff policy which alone would make possible an international system of currencies based on gold. On the other hand, America still thinks that Britain's going off gold in 1931 was a device to get some advantage over them and other people, and since then some of the things Britain has done have suggested that she is less concerned for the restoration of international trade than for other objects. Until the different nations have come to think of international trade as a way of mutual enrichment, to be encouraged, and not as a disguised kind of warfare, there is not much point in trying to stabilise the exchanges.