NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22820, 30 August 1937, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

HEALTH STANDARDS "We will take as our definition of a good standard of health a state of well-being such that no improvement can be effected by any change in the diet," said Sir John Orr, director of the Rowett Animal Research Institute, in a recent speech. "I assure you that stock farmers breeding for the market will accept no lower standard than this, and if human health and- physical fitness were marketable commodities, and had the same monetary value as the breeder's stock, then the feeding of our children on a lower standard would bo regarded as gross business inefficiency." DWINDLING DISTANCE Space, which the astronomers are for ever expanding into the infinite, seems to grow suddenly small as we contemplate the 12-hour passage of the Caledonia across the Atlantic, says the Sunday Times. The voyage that in the Mayflower filled moro than three months becomes a thing to be contemplated within the sun-lit hours of a single day. New York is brought nearer to London in point of time to the traveller than was the English York in the days of the stago coach. There have been flights as remarkable as those of Caledonia and Clipper 111., but none that so surely foretold the swift coming of a new era in travel. These vessels, in their apparently easy conquest of the Atlantic, are the pioneers of a regular service that will presently be almost as much a commonplace as the departure of the mail train from Euston. There will be further trials and much organisation before that comes about, but Clipper 111. and Caledonia have removed the last doubts of its possibility. CHECKING BUREAUCRACY In 1932 a Committee on Ministers' Powers, appointed by Lord Sankev, conceived and subsequently brought forth a report recommending the establishment of a Standing Committee in each House of Parliament to be charged with the duty of scrutinising every bill conferring legislative powers upon Ministers and, still more important.. every regulation made thereunder, writes Mr. .T. H. Morgan, K.C., in the Daily Mail. But nothing has been done to give effect to these recommendations. Pressed on the point in the House, a Minister replied that ho "could hold out no hope" of early action on the subject. When a Minister ceases to hope, the public may well begin to despair. It is high time that the rank and file of members in the House took the matter up: It is not a political i.ssue. Its prosecution involves no breach of party allegiance. It is simply a question of restoring to the House of Commons itself its own "ancient and undoubted privilege." That privilege, the most ancient of them all, but now the most in doubt, is that Parliament, and Parliament alone, should have the right to make our laws and, in making them, to regulate our lives. ART EDUCATION The possibilities of art education for children through the fuller use of museums and art galleries were discussed by Mr. John Rothenstein, director of the Sheffield city art galleries and Ruskin Museum, at the conference of the Museums' Association at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The progressive movement from large houses into small houses and fiats, he said, brought within measurable distance the time when almost everybody, through lack of space, would be compelled to keep their objects of beauty in national and local art institutions. The principal task of such places was to make the man in the street conscious of his possessions and to help him to use them. Art galleries and museums, which were so recently considered luxuries or even backwaters, had now become vital forces in the struggle to rebuild society, and the most important service which they could render to the child was to equip him to be not an artist or a connoisseur, but .a better citizen. If this was to be achieved they must banish from their minds the false distinction, due to the Industrial Revolution's virtual extinction of craftsmanship, between the fine arts and the crafts. What was important was a clear conception of the essential unity of creative effort in the visual arts. The ideal art gallery should contain a sufficient number of examples of furniture, pottery, metalwork, weaving, and so forth, belonging to each of the various periods represented, to lead up to the painting and sculpture, to enable these to be seen in some sort of relation to their cultural background.

PROVIDING AGAINST A SLUMP "There is a kind of critic that wo havo among us —tho critic to whom all this bustle and activity in trade seems to cause acute discomfort, who writes to the papers to warn us that presently it will come to an end, who asks us questions in tho House of Commons, and demands to know what the Government is going to do about it," said ]NI r. Neville Chamberlain, in a recent speech. " J hope you won't allow these dismal Jimmies to interfere with your innocent pleasure in the sunshino bccauso of tlieir assertions that it is going to rain to-morrow. There are plenty of umbrellas in the stands, and, anyhow, the rain never drowned anybody. Of course, wo know that trade must have its ups and downs, and no doubt as our rearmament begins to slack off we shall want something to tako its placo. But I can think of quite a number of reasons why it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever find ourselves again in such a depression as we suffered from in 1931. It must not he thought for a moment that the Government is not considering even now what measures it should take by way of public works or otherwise to provide employment when the output of our factories begins to bo relaxed. But nothing in the way of public works that this or any other Government could do could provide more than a mere fraction of the effect which would bo produced by a comparatively small variation in the general trado of the country, and, therefore, tho best way in which wo can provide against a slump is to encourage and assist our traders to develop new markets, and by research and by tho reequipment of their factories to reduco tlieir costs. ,},jet us remember that there aro vast areas of the world where the standard of living is far lower than it is here, and a very small improvement in that standard of living would open up now markets which this country ought to bo in a position to supply."