NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22934, 12 January 1938, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

COURSE OF TRADE CYCLE "Some economists tell us that there are what are known as trade cycles," said Mr. A. L. Beecham, M.P., speaking in the House of Commons, "fake the period 1874 to 1894; there were six prosperous years and 15 depressed years. From 1895 to 1913 there were 15 prosperous and four depressed years. Various reasons have been ascribed for this curious process. The reason for the cycle is this: There is always the tendency in industry for a winding-up process to go on, started automatically. Demand follows oil demand and investments increase until the time comes when the downward process begins, when you cannot get enough I labour because it becomes expensive and the cost of equipment does not enable you to produce at the prices expected by the consumer. Prices become too high for what the consumer wants to pay. Orders cease, apprehension sets in, and one is left with the stock." MACHINERY ON THE FARM Labour scarcity is causing increasing difficulties for farmers in Britain, writes a Times correspondent. The drift to the towns, serious as it has been for some years, has now been greatly accelerated by the rearmament programme, and it may be questioned whether a large proportion of the men who have been attracted away, by the higher wages and perhaps more exciting life of industry will ever return to the land. The labour problem is likely to be a serious one for agriculture during the coming decade, and can be satisfactorily solved only by the regrettable alternative of intensified mechanisation. With this prospect, more progress is needed in the organisation of trials of machines, designed to provide farmers with independent information on the working merits of particular types. These should be of as much value to the manufacturer as to the farmer, for apart from the fact that trials help in "spreading the gospel" of machinery, a fully satisfied farming clientele is a worth-while asset to the whole body of manufacturers. ORDERED LIBERTY "Each succeeding generation is only dimly conscious of the progress made by previous generations," said the Canadian Minister of Finance, Mr. C. A. Dunning, in a recent address. "The citizen of the British Commonwealth of to-day starts life with all the advantages, material, moral and social, which have been won by all who have gone before. He naturally, therefore, tends to take for granted, as commonplace, all the hard-won attainments of the past. I sometimes think that it would add greatly to our appreciation of British institutions if suddenly, some morning, we could awake in the world of 1837 and live in that past century for a week or two. I venture to say that on returning to 1937 we should have a very much higher appreciation of the value of many things which we now take for granted. The greatest responsibility of Empire at this time is to see to it that every citizen knows and appreciates keenly all that" ordered liberty under the British Crown means to the individual, to the nation, and to the Commonwealth. Thus we may be sure that our steady march to human progress and betterment will go on and on because it is the will of a free people." IDEAS THAT WIN WARS The whole thing comes down to this —that wars are won, not by weapons, but by ideas, and the people who win them are those that produce, accept, borrow, or steal ideas but at any rate have them, writes the Manchester Guardian in discussing British Army policy. It was not tanks that did so much to win the war, but the idea that made the tank; it was not masses of machine-guns that directed the course of the war, but the idea that machine-guns ought to be multiplied beyond anything formerly conceived. The old story that is taught to school children about the Romans and the Carthaginians has a terrible truth in it. The Carthaginians were sailors and the Romans were landlubbers, but the Romans dropped spikes from their ships to those of the Carthaginians, locked the ships together, provided themselves with a "land" battle, and won hands down. Our soldiers have to face tremendous problems; whether, should there unhappily be another war, a British army of millions is to go abroad again or not, what another war would be like, and, since it surely will not be like the last, how it is to be won. That is to say, there must be energy, freshness of mind, and initiative rather than text-books and tradition. If the Secretary of State for War, Mr. HoreBelisha, is on this track, he will have public support enough to compensate him for any merely professional criticisms.

THE LACHISH LETTERS "In these letters we have the most valuable discovery yet made in the Biblical archaeology of Palestine and the most intimate corroboration of the Bible to this day. While in other important finds the enemy of Israel speaks about his wars and sieges, or half-.Jews in Babylonia or in Egypt record their life and doings, here for the first time we have authentic and intimate contemporary reports from Jews faithfully iollowing their God, about their inner political and religious struggles ns told in the book of Jeremiah." Thus write the members of the Wallcome Archaeological Expedition to the Near East regarding their recent discoveries at Lnchish in a volume just published. They unearthed at Tel el Duweir (the site of ancient Lachish) 18 ostraea with nearly 90 fully readable lines of clear writing, which they claim to he the first real personal documents in prcexilic Hebrew writing found in Palestine. The Periodical for October Inst, issued by the Oxford Press, contains a facsimile of "not only the best preserved of the larger ostraea, but certainly the most interesting and important document among the Lachish letters and may be considered almost as an authentic chapter of the Holy Scriptures." Five of the letters found on the potsherds refer to the fate of Tjrijah, the son of Shemaiah, who is named by Jeremiah. The letters belong to the end of the sixth century, 8.C., and are of extraordinary value to all Biblical scholars.