NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22405, 29 April 1936, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NEW ST. PATRICK NEEDED "We need to look for a new St. Patrick," said Mr. Justice Hanna, of the Irish Free State High Court, in a speech in Dublin. Crime in the Free State was increasing, he said. While there had been a decline in murder and manslaughter, child murder, dishonesty in business, offences against public order and juvenile crime were more numerous. Juvenile offences had nearly doubled. Indecent assault was also more frequent, and he felt more weight should be given to the opinion of the clergy that certain entertainments tended to the demoralisation of young people. The growth of crimp showed a restless and disturbed spirit throughout the country

KING'S INTEREST IN HOUSING "I recall with the very greatest gratitude that it was the present King who gave the lead in the campaign against the slums in this country. And, as we all know, his interest remains keen and unabated to-day," said Sir Kingsley Wood, British Minister of Health, in a recent speech. The British Government, Sir Kingsley said, had set itself out for the clearance of the slums, and the erection of some 280,000 houses. He was glad to say that already about 80,000 hud been built, and over 40,000 more were at this moment under erection, and he had T>een able to give approval for 140,000 more. Britain had made the greatest contribution of any nation so far as the erection of new houses was concerned. Since the Armistice nearly 3,000,000 new houses had been created —a remarkable record.

LEPROSY AN EMPIRE SCOURGE A letter from King Edward commending the efforts being made to stamp out the scourge of leprosy from those parts of the British Empire where it still exists was read at a meeting in London of the general committee of the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association. The King wrote: " We are fortunate in this country in that the horrors of leprosy have never gained a hold over our own people, but in many parts of the Empire this immemorial scourge still claiais a terrible number of victims. The association, of which I am patron, is performing a very vital task in combating leprosy in India, Africa, the Levant and the West Indies." Sir Edward Gait said investigation had shown that leprosy was far more widespread than was formerly thought, and their 1924 estimate of 300,000 lepers in the British Empire had been increased to a minimum of 2,000 000 to-day. The greatest progress had been mado in India, where hundreds if clinics had been opened, many hundreds of doctors trained, and hundreds of thousands of lepers treated. By active propaganda the people of India had been roused to help in stamping out leprosy. Most medical missionaries were now treating lepers. /

IN BERLIN TO-DAY Not long ago I was in Berlin, writes "Atticus" in the Sunday Times. It was a city at war although there was no sound of guns. It was a city of silent terror. Business men hesitated before entering their homes and their offices. They felt safer wandering in the streets. The foyer of the Opera was filled during the interval by officers in uniform with swords, marching round and round In the newspapers there were pitiful advertisements from wives in the residential districts asking for the whereabouts of their husbands, whom they believed to be alive. I picked up a pleasant souvenir, the "Who's Who" of the Nazi movement. The book was in the press when the famous "purge" took place. With admirable economy they did not reset it, but merely removed the text and blocks of the murdered members of the party. General von Schleicher is represented by nearly a column and a-half of white space. So little space was given to some of the victims that they must have been hardly worth shooting. Industrialists, financiers, manufacturers shrugged their shoulders. What was the use? There was only one business—armaments, and only one psychology—war. Adolf Hitler, • the Dictator, was in power.

KEEPING THE LAMPS ALIGHT Lord Rutherford last month issued an appeal in London for renewed assistance to those many men and women who in the last few years have been forced into exile from the universities of Germany and elsewhere. But there is, as he himself says, a wider significance about this work than the immediate and practical one, notes the Manchester Guardian. In trying to succour these unfortunate victims of racial or political hate the rest of the world does more than merely succour individuals. It does more than simply fling a charitable crust or two to those who may be in desperate need of it. If that were all, common humanity would demand that, within the measure of our power, we should not do less for a Nobel prize-winner than we would do for a starving peasant. Nor even need we base our motives on the calculating basis of material advantage, though such motives should be powerful enough. The pecuniary benefit to the countries of their new adoption of the brains and skill of these exiles cannot be computed, but we may be very sure that the dictatorships' loss is the free countries' immense gain. History sufficiently attests how deeply, for example,, England profited by the migration of the Huguenots, or the whole of Europe by the dispersal of the scholars after the fall of Constantinople, an event which Professor Trevelyan considers may ultimately prove less momentous in its consequences than the dispersals of our own day from Russia, Italy and Germany. But beyond all these reasons is the knowledge that in helping these individual victims of insensate oppression we are helping, as Lord Rutherford says, to "maintain the traditional loyalties of the freedom of science and learning" in an age which has few people to maintain them and desperate need that they should be maintained. "The lights are going out all over Europe," said Lord Grey in a famous passage 22 years ago. " They will not be relit in our time,." If there is one light in country after country which to-day is flickering and near to extinction it is the lamp of pure science and untrammelled learning.