NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23010, 11 April 1938, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NOT AN ILL WIND The tempestuous weather conditions which have marked January and February in England, while they have resulted in very extensive damage, arc probably responsible in no small measure for the fact that 1938 has been a healthy year, so far, says the meteorological expert of the Sunday Times. According to the latest returns of the Registrar-General, deaths in London and 121 other cities and large towns of England and Wales during the seven weeks ended February 19 were 24 per cent fewer than in the corresponding period of 1937. It is believed that continued strong winds are beneficial in this way because they serve to prevent accumulations of stagnant, germ-laden air in densely populated centres. There is no doubt that quiet, cold and foggy winters are the most unhealthy.

FOLLIES COME HOME TO ROOST Our past follies have come home to roost, says "Scrutator," writing in the Sunday Times on developments in Austria. If we had wanted to make a barrier to German expansion on the south, wo should never have dismembered Austria. The old empire had to go, and was rapidly breaking up before the war, but a federal union of its component parts would have made a solid obstacle, and could not have been broken down by political chicane. If, again, we had decided to dismember, it was folly to prohibit future union, political and, still more, economic. We thereby made of some dozen hilly cantons, which were all that was left of Austria, an un-redeemed Germany, inhabited exclusively by Germans, poverty-stricken and discontented, and of Vienna a capital without provinces. It was inevitable that there should be trouble.

DRIVERS* REACTION TIME TEST

One of the chief causes of road accidents is sluggish reaction time on the part of certain drivers of motor ! vehicles, writes Surgeon Pear-Admiral : C. M. Beadnell in the Spectator. The j expression "reaction time" is used : here not in its strict physiological j sense, where it is restricted to brain ; and spinal-cord operations, but to cover | the entire interval between, the iinj pact of a stimulus —the light—or | sound-waves from another car, a j cyclist, pedestrian, or dog, etc. —on the ! eye or ear of the driver, and his or | her response by activating and coordinating the muscles concerned in hand and foot movements so as to cope with the new situation thus suddenly introduced. Does it not follow, then, that a part of the examination tests for prospective drivers should be tho recording of their normal reaction times? Those below a certain standard —based on results afforded by expert drivers —should be definitely refused driving licences. M. STALIN'S OBJECTIVE The Moscow newspaper Pravda recently published a letter of considerable importance from M. Stalin, notes the Spectator. He affirms not only that the final victory of Socialism must be on a world scale, but that even tho victory of Socialism in a single country (the U.S.S.R., for example) depends on the efforts and activities of the international proletariat. The statement is surprising only because, after 10 years of polemic against Trotsky, during which men and women have been executed and persecuted for holding Trotskyist views, M. Stalin appears to have ended by adopting, in a modified form, the heresies of his routed and exiled opponent. The immediate effect is likely to be great. It will help to end those dissensions which have weakened and divided the Communist and working-class movements outside the U.S.S.R.; and in so doing will increase their power to give the U.S.S.R. the kind of assistance for which M. Stalin hopes. His change of mind means that he recognises the dependence of the Soviet Union on the political pressure which "the international proletariat" may bring to bear on capitalist Governments to adopt foreign policies which imply a collective defence of the Soviet Union against aggression. In this sense M. Stalin's statement is his answer to the Anti-Comintern Pact. CINEMA AND ITS PUBLIC The cinema to-day is facing a crisis as grave as any in its history, writes Miss C. A. Lejeune, the film critic, in the London Observer. Something has happened which cap be set right only by sheer hard thinking and intelligent action. The cinema and the public have been jogging along together for more than a-quarter of a century now. During that time the public has grown up. Tho cinema has not. How much longer can such a companionship endure? The ideas of the cinema are, broadly speaking, the same to-day as they were at the time when Mary Pickford became the world's sweetheart, and Thcda Bara, the original "vamp," was photographed squatting nonchalantly beside a skeleton. A great deal has happened in the world since then. War, depression, unemployment, political and social readjustment, and, above all, the march of scientific invention, which has. suddenly made us free of the ether, telescoped space, and readjusted speed. I don't say that there is no room for the sweetheart and the vamp in this latter-day cosmography,: but I, would point out that tliey are up against pretty strong competition from, say, the internal combustion engine. The trouble with motion picture producers is that they have not the least idea of tho range of things that really interest the modern generation. Secure in their own superheated offices, they see nobody but their colleagues and employees, hear nothing but film talk, go nowhere except to the places where film people gather. They are engaged in providing entertainment for a public that they don't know, have never known, and make not the slightest attempt ,toi get to know. They should, read the specialised magazines that are published every day of the week, on every subject, from zoology to aeronautics. They should spend a month or ,so in, a mean street of a factory town. They should eat at popular restaurants, < travel third class at tho rush hour, talk to news agelits, housewives,! library assistants, schoolboys. If they do they will find out, better late than, never, that fact as well as fiction is lull of stories, and that Boy meets Girl is only one of them, and by no means the most dramatic. And then they will be able to go back to the studios and make real pictures.