NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24101, 21 October 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

GROWING OLD MORE SLOWLY

It is a fact that the expectation of I life has increased since the beginning of the century by some 20 years, notes the medical correspondent of the Times Trade and Engineering Supplement. The expectation of youth has increased in the same degree. We grow old more slowly. And we grow mature more quickly in so far as maturity is to be identified with experience and with skill. The general level of efficiency is higher than at any earlier period; the individual level of efficiency lasts longer. All this is occurring independently of the individual himself. The man who tries to be young when he is old remains, as always, a figure of contempt and pity; but to be as fit at 40 as were our fathers at 30 is neither contemptible not piteous. A SOLDIER TO HIS SON In "Letters of a Soldier to his Son," "A.E.E.R" writes in the News-Letter: Don't worry if you mistake your vocation at first, providing you retain your flexibility, which —to adapt a maxim of military tactics —means readiness to switch all your resources to reinforce success whenever and wherever you may meet it (which will probably be in the place you least anticipated). Learn, and learn early, to distinguish between matters of principle which are few and unchanging and matters of opinion which are many and mutable. I hold only one political principle: that each individual is born with an equal right to happiness and the freedom to seek it in his own way so long as he does not encroach on the like liberty of others. The particular plans which L happen to believe would help to ensure the greatest happiness and liberty of the greatest number are, on the other hand, matters of opinion about which 1 have changed my view in the past and may do so again MONEY IS NOT WEALTH '1 would emphasise again that the function of taxation in wartime is not merely to defray from revenue as much as possible of the current expenditure of the Government, but to check the development of an excess of purchasing power over the available supply ol goods and services," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, speaking in the House of Commons. "Unless this purchasing power is removed from people's pockets inflation would result. Inflation is caused when the amount ol money in the hands of the people increases at a greater rate than the supply of goods and services. The danger of inflation in war time is intensified by reason of the fact that while the amount of mone\ is increasing the goods and services are actually diminishing. It is absolutely essential that serious inflation should be avoided, and it cannot be too strongly urged that everv effort should be made by everyone throughout the country to avoid unessential spending. We have come to regard money as wealth, and for this reason it is perhaps a little difficult for the man in the street to realise that money is not wealth in itself, and is quite useless if there are no goods to buy. This is an important lesson we hare to

learn, and the sooner we learn it the better it will be for the war effort. But having learned the lesson, let us not forget it when peace conies. When at last our tremendous exertions are over, and we can return once more to the fields and factories to produce the food and clothing, and the goods of all kinds, which are now. owing to the war, in such short supply, unless we have learned the lesson that money is not wealth, we may make the same mistake that we made after the last war." THE ATLANTIC AGE "The history of the Ancient World may have been the history of things that happened round the Mediterranean." said Mr. Philip Guedella, the historian, in a recent address. "But the history of the Modern World is, and will be increasingly, the history of things that happen round the Atlantic. That is the significance of the Americas. The countries of the eastern shore —Spain. Portugal, France, England, Scotland, Ireland-—found them and populated them and helped to make them what they are. You will find Spain and Portugal indelibly impressed ou Latin America, France and Scotland on eastern and western Canada, Ireland imparting its own flavour to the politics (.no less than the police force) of the United States, and England a potent influence on the formation of all North America. Not all the children take after their parents. The New Yorker is not the same as Punch; French Canada is a France that never was: France as it might, have been if there had been no French Revolution. And stern Spanish ancestors have some difficulty in recognising themselves in the democracies of Uruguay and Chile. Yet all of them on both sides of the Atlantic are relations, and the future of the world lies in their hands. For the age we live in is an Atlantic age. Its course will not he set by what may happen round the Baltic, that blind-alley of a sea; and (he shores of the Mediterranean have shot their bolt in history. They arc museum pieces now. But what happens round the Atlantic —that is what matters. At the moment a small group of the Atlantic peoples who live in the to]) right-hand corner of the map stand between the whole oceanic area and a remarkably unpleasant fate."