NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22210, 10 September 1935, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

" MUST TAKE THE RISK " "In the last resort wo have to take our decision at the Council table at Geneva," said Sir Austin Chamberlain, the ex-Foreign Secretary, who numbers the Locarno Treaty among his achievements for peace. "Wo have to take the risk of saying, 'We are prepared to fulfil our obligations under tlio Covenant if others will do tlio sanio.' Wo ought to say that openly to tlio Council, even at the risk that others may refuse. If we have to use that language, and others are offended by it, and wo come homo emptyhanded, that much wo owe to the honour of tho British name and to the efforts that our successive Governments have mado to make tho League of Nations a real force in international life in the interests of peace and security for us all." KEY TO THE FUTURE Britain is terribly behind in her use of the air, asserts tho London Observer. A right view of this matter is constantly confused by tho popular association of flying with war. Our defects of defence in tho air are a grim reality, and cannot bo taken too closely to heart. But if thore were no such thing as war, tho air is the highway to the victories of peace. In far less than a quarter of a century the nation to which it is not a commonplace thoroughfare will bo hopelessly out of tho running. Tho man who has not flown will bo almost on a level with the infant who has not walked. The two-dimen-sional life will have dwindled into a quaint curiosity. They know better in America, in Holland, in Germany, in France —in every country that is looking clearly ahead and has summed up the conditions of success in a world where the subjugation of time and space is the first requisite of efficiency. The moral of that is plain enough for an Empire whose members are as farflung as tho dimensions of the habitable globe will permit.

PLEASURES OF CONVERSATION

" As hills of sand to the feet of the traveller," says the Arabian proverb, " so is the voice of the incessant talker to the ears of the wise." The saw, like most others, is intended to flatter those who are willing to flatter themselves, remarks the Morning Post. And who does not flatter himself, not that he is wise, but that ho is a man of few words? We are nothing of the kind. A German newspapor man recently made the necessary calculations, and his estimate is that the average man uses 4,500,000 words a year. That is a whole lot of words. We may still believe in the taciturnity of sheiks; it is idlo to pretend after the revelations of the Berlin Illustriette Nachtausgabo that we Nordics are not a pretty talkative lot. And why not? Apart from eating, is thero any purer or, on the whole, more innocuous pleasure than the physical act of talking? It is true that the pretentious wiseacres of all ages have been against it, declaring that words aro like leaves and where they most abound much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found but is not that a trick of the wiseacres to monopolise the conversation? THE COMMON COLD The new British Minister of Health, Sir Kingsley Wood, iu his first review of the nation's health, raised once more the urgent problem of the common cold, a disorder which, says the medical correspondent of the Morning Post, costs the nation an enormous sum each year, and whoso only benefit to the community is that its continued and unabated presence prevents the acquisition by doctors of any undue pride in the triumphs of modern medicine. Knowledge of such primary matters as whether colds are —or are not — bacterial diseases, of their relation to diet, to clothing, to weather, is more than inadequate and calls for Community research on organised lines. Various bacteria, viruses, food poisons have all at some time or other had their share of blame as the cause of the disorder; and as to remedies, the variety available—cold baths, hot baths, largo meals, starvation —suggests that if all of them are successful in individual cases then the " common cold " is a general term for a group of disorders, as the name " rheumatism " is. It is high time such points were cleared up. The apparently innocent nature of a <sold has disguised too long its enormous incidence throughout the year, and made us forget the largjj number of " sinus " and chest diseases which are its sequels. Its problem, like that of rheumatism, is beyond the field of the individual investigator. Its solution calls for the organisation of largo scalo statistical research.

POLICE VERSUS CRIMINAL "Then and Now" was the theme of Sir John Simon when, in tho House of Commons, ho moved tho Homo Office vote, a task that he first discharged 20 years ago. The Home Secretary's reuriion with Scotland Yard after 20 years seemed to fascinate him, according to the Parliamentary correspondent of the Morning Post. "Then" there was the lonely constable shuttlecocking on his beat, isolated from headquarters, wondering, as ho scratched his head, when something suspicious happened, whether to blow his whistlo or obtain reinforcements from the nearest polico station. "Now" the constable did not hesitate. Ho simply telephoned to Scotland Yard, whose authorities sat before a great map showing, at any time of day, tho position of London's polico cars. A wireless message, and the suspected criminal, car bandit or burglar, had a cordon drawn round him. Modern crime, as Sir John Simon said, might have its Moriartys, but the modern policeman was not by any means tho slow-witted gaper of tho thriller writers. At the same time modern inventions have in many ways provided new means and opportunities for tho criminal. Tho motor-car, for example, lias made him mobile and elusivo to a degree which has proved extremely disconcerting to tho police; and only of late has it been possible to enlist tho equipment and organisation necessary to confound tho knavish tricks of tho up-to-date crook. Flying squads, wireless and intensive training of tho Criminal Investigation Department, have achieved much in overtaking tho enterprise and resource of the modern criminal; but the contest, like tbat between gun and armour, is one that Is never fought to a finish.