NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22821, 31 August 1937, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

RIDDLE OF FEWER BIRTHS The birth-rate is falling, not only in highly civilised communities where many causes may be sought, but also, and unaccountably, in such an isolated community as that on Pitcairn Island, notes Mr. Arnold Cooper in a letter to the Listener. Figures—recent figures—arc given by Professor Shapiro of America, in his book, "Heritage of the Bounty." If the eleven-year sunspot cycle had been discovered after the sympathetic radio reception cycle had been observed, would not the latter have seemed unaccountable? May not some extra-human, though quite natural, law operate similarly in the matter of fertility? It is noteworthy that Professor Shapiro can find no explanation of the fall in the birth-rate on Pitcairn. t ADULT EDUCATION "Don't forget that we receive our education at the wrong time of life," said Sir Richard Livingstone, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in broadcasting to sixth form schoolboys. "One thing 1 feel certain about you is that in your forties you will say: 'I wish I'could have my education over again.' One's teens are the right time to learn languages and mathematics and science, and to feed the imagination on the pictures in history and literature. But one needs to have seen something of life to read history and literature with anything approaching real understanding: for their subject is life and man; and how can wo really understand them till we know something of life and of men? It is when one has seen at first-hand something of life and its problems that one.feels the need of an opportunity to study and think about them. From which I draw two morals: that we should keep up our studies in later life—that is the age when we get most from them; and that we should try and develop in this country a serious system of adult education for all. Until that happens we shall not have an educated nation." ON KEEPING FIT "Keeping fit" is, in most people's minds a hazy motive for exercise. We need an immediate goal of enjoyment to stimulate us, asserts a correspondent writing in tbe Listener. And does not enjoyment lie in individuality? After a day of mechanical and masswork, we require scope for our expressive and creative, instincts. A vast majority of illness is due to the ego protesting against its levelling under mass-production systems. Our physical education should keep us fit in two ways—by stimulating our circulation and by encouraging the necessary expression of the individual personality. Muscular flabhiness is caused by lack of exercise. In the same way the general state of being "half-alive" is due to an atrophied imagination. The character may be compared to a house. The walls and the foundation are the..body, and all the business to do with the body is conducted on the ground floor; the business to do with the feelings takes place on the first floor, and that of the thought on the top floor. The inmate of the house is the will. The means of intercommunication in tho house is the' imagination. Physical training linked with the imagination becomes the physical education of the "whole man."

"CONSTRUCTIVE" ART The "constructivists" construct nothing new, writes Mr. Eric Newton in the Sunday Times in criticism of the exhibition of so-called "constructive" art at the London Gallery. They merely jettison one half of the artist s problem in order to make the other half seem more important. To them an apple is merely an obstacle between the spectator and his full appreciation of the fundamental beauty of a sphere. This is a Puritan's view of art. In much the same spirit Cromwell regarded a statue of the Virgin as an obstacle between the worshipper and his full realisation of the Godhead. Puritanism as a purge is an excellent thing. No doubt nineteenth century art had dulled our aesthetic senses by giving them too little to do. No doubt art was in danger of becoming clogged with the particular and losing sight of the universal. And no doubt "constructive" art will act as an emetic by eliminating the irrelevant attractions of apples and thighs and leaving us only spheres and cylinders to sharpen our aesthetic wits on. But an emetic cannot nourish. It can only got rid of bad nourishment. To have done that is something, but the pleasurable sensation that follows after the emetic is short-lived. Sooner or later the void will have to be filled. With what? Perhaps the "constructive" artists will answer? AMERICAN TARIFF POLICY Far-reaching possibilities - latent in the foreign trade policy of the United States were discussed in London by Mr. Kenneth Hogatc, who, as president of the Wall Street Journal, speaks with exceptional authority on financial and industrial affairs in America. "I feel," lie said, "that hero in London you perhaps do not yet appreciate the full meaning of the foreign trade policy launched by our Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull. For the first time in history—l think it is quite safe to say that—you have America deliberately creating an adverse balance of trade for itself. That is the effect at the moment of the series of trade treaties—there must be nearly 20 of them—that Mr. Hull has signed. Naturally the adverse balance is accepted as a temporary disadvantage to be remedied when the full, economic scheme, of which these treaties are a part, is completed. The success or failure of Mr. Hull's general scheme hangs on a treaty with Britain. Now, if Mr. Hull succeeds, it will not be only America that will- benefit. I believe that if he can carry his plans through it will mark a return —well, not to free trade, but at any rate to freer trade than the world has known since the war. It will mean the lowering of tariff barriers that have been steadily mounting on every frontier for the past,2o years. Apart from ultimate sudcess or failure, one very significant thing is that, with this system of treaties, the United States is taking for the first time what one might call a world view of foreign affairs. What is just'as important is that this is closer to the British view than we have ever been before."