NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22173, 29 July 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

STILL THE WEAKER SEX Women, whatever they may do in the way of breaking swimming and other records, are the weaker sex, said Dr. N. Tattersall, of Leeds, speaking at the recent Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health and Institute of Hygiene at Harrogate, England. "Their physical make-up is such' that they cannot stand the strain and stress of industrial life as well as the men can," he said. While there was no doubt that there wero . women who had slimmed themselves into tuberculosis, slimming, dancing and cocktails only affected such a small proportion of women that they could not affect the figures of the country as a whole. Dr. W. Stanton Gilrnour, medical superintendent of the City of Leeds Sanatorium, said that at about the marriage age the tuberculosis figures among young women tended to fall off, which would seem to show that the stress of being a housewife was not so adverse as that of being in industry. NEW POLITICAL PRECEDENTThere is no precedent in our time for a British Prime Minister resigning his office and serving in the Cabinet under his successor, notes the political correspondent of the Sunday Times. Mr. Bonar Law, whose place was taken by Mr. Baldwin in 1923, was too ill to do so; Mr. Lloyd George was evicted from office in 1922, as Mr. Asquith had been in 1916; Sir Henry CampbellBannerman was dying when Mr. Asquith succeeded him in 1908; the late Lord Salisbury never held office after he made way for Mr. Balfour in 1900; nor did Mr. Gladstone after he relinquished his fourth Premiership in 1894 and was followed by Lord Rosebery. But the conditions to-day are also without precedent. Mr. Mac Donald has voluntarily resigned because, after six years of it, he must have relief from the heavy strain of the Premiership; but there is no vital difference on policy, and, as Lord President of the Council, he will support Mr. Baldwin as Mr. Baldwin has supported him. THE TOTALITARIAN STATE The modern State as developed under dictators in Europe moulds the character of its citizens, says the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Hensley Henson, in a recent article on " Some Signs of the Times." It does this, he adds, by fixing the range and character of the education which all must receive, directs their thoughts by keeping control of every instrument by which knowledge is conveyed and opinion formulated—the press, the platform, the theatre, the machinery for broadcasting —and imposes on the Church the type of its doctrine and the mode of its worship. Never throughout the long history of mankind, aH he travelled the difficult road from aboriginal savagery to the heights of civilisation, has the individual been menaced by a despotism so searching, so übiquitous, and so severe. The facile acceptance of this enslavement of the individual is itself an impressive indication of the slight and superficial character of the Christianity of Christendom. Happily the victory of despotism is not quite complete. In Russia and in Germany there are protesting minorities, who, in the teeth of the utmost difficulty, are holding their ground. THE GLOWWORM'S SECRET Science has at last probed the secret of the firefly, whose achievements as an automatic lamp have long been a source of envy and annoyance to illumination engineers, says the Morning Post. The trouble has not been so much that the firefly provides free light, as that it produces its light more economically; whereas all humanly-con-structed lamps waste most of their energy as heat, the firefly is almost perfectly efficient. The whole progress of illumination has been no more than an unsuccessful pursuit of the firefly standard. Now, in the Schenectady laboratories of the General Electric Company of America, scientists have succeeded in emulating the firefly's skill. The firefly's light is the result of chemical changes naturally occurring in its body, and synthetic "firefly light" is produced in the same way. The appropriate chemical formula comprises four different chemicals, including sodium peroxide, a near relative of the wellknown hair bleach. The light produced is "cold," so that there is little or no waste of energy as heat radiation. But, unfortunately, the last laugh is still with the firefly. Although the imitation is otherwise satisfactory, the necessary chemicals are too expensive. The cost of synthetic firefly light would bo about £5 an hour. ENGLISH COOKING REVIVAL So much is heard of the lamentable ways of women with vegetables, of conquest of the kitchen by tinned foods and of the decline of English cooking, that it is a relief when somebody ups and says that these complaints are a packet of nonsense—or should be taken with a handful of kitchen salt, says the Morning Post. That is the rejoinder of Mrs. Arthur Webb, who has been on a mission to make your mouth water: a tastingtour of the English counties to see how in solid farmhouses and yeomen's cottages the daily battle with country appetites is waged. She has come back full of good things, and with the recipes for compounding them; and these succulent researches Mrs. Webb has been passing on to the morning audiences of the British Broadcasting: Corporation; so that many a Inisband home for dinner that same evening from the City has been flabbergasted by Singing; Hinnies or a Figgy Squab. Many of the tasty and favourite dishes Mrs, Webb is raising from a local to a general fame are made not from written recipes, but according to the methods mothers taught their daughters; and in getting them safely down on paper, Mrs. Webb is doing for traditional English cookery what j Mr. Cecil Sharpe did for traditional English songs. And the interesting point is that "modern wives" who have "forgotten how to cook," arid who are said to rely chiefly on baking powders and tin-openers, are clamouring to bo told more, and are eager to fill the small cubic space of town flats with the recondite, though savoury, odours of good old country fare.