NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24142, 8 December 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Because Russia had thrown her great weight into the conflict some people thought that all was all right, said Lord Bennett, speaking in London, it was not all right and never would b«* all right if we thought for a moment that freedom could be maintained without effort. The price of freedom was sacrifice, struggle, strength and power to overcome the evil forces that always threatened its life.

OLD HOPES AND NEW VISION The churches have felt to the full the tragedy which war means, writes Dr. Sidney M. Berry, secretary of the English Congregational Union. There is a fundamental incompatibility between war and all its methods and the Christian message. The churches have prayed and toiled for peace in -the years preceding the war. They looked for another and a better way of settling disputes between nations. If there is any criticism to be offered it would be that they were not sufficiently realistic in their interpretation of human affairs, that their hopes became caricatured into illusions, and that they imagined that it only needed a strong lead for peace to bring about the desired result. They know better now. Those scales have fallen from their eyes. The old hopes remain, and behind them a grimmer determination. The great majority of Christian people know that there is no chance of a new order until the earth is cleansed of the evil thing which has brought this worldwide tragedy. But they see, too, that it needs more than the material arm to break the power of that evil. The religion of the pleasant ways and the soft persuasions has gone. Religion now I faces the hard reality of sin, and its message is the glorious reality of redemption. How is the world to be cleansed unless it be cleansed hv the grace and power of God? VALUE OF EGGS IN DIET A powerful plea for keeping up the production of eggs in wartime Britain was made by Lord Dawson of Penn, the eminent physician, in a debate on food policy in the House of Lords. "If you give one hundred pounds of protein food to the cow," he said, "it produces thirty-five pounds of milk, the hen produces thirty-one pounds of eggs, the pig twenty-one pounds of meat and the bullock, which is by far the lowest, only seven pounds of meat. This order of efficiency is accepted by all authorities, including the National Committee on Nutrition which was founded by the League of Nations. My first point, therefore, is that the egg is not something you can treat lightly, and, secondly, that it is a food of very great value from a nutritive point of view. Making a comparison with milk, it is rich in protein and vitamins, and as far as vitamin B is concerned it is even better than milk. The ejjg is a very digestible and easily-handled food. In cookery light foods are of great importance, and they are especially important to workers who are beginning to get weary in mind and weak in their digestions, as they are very apt to do under the conditions that prevail today. All authorities are agreed that without milk and without eggs you oannot make light food, and, although

it is right that there should be a priority of eggs for children and for some invalids from the point of view of preventive medicine, from the point of view of keeping the active population well and fit we cannot neglect the fact that the availability of eggs will play a big and important part. It is interesting to note how the horse sense of the people accords with this view. It is important to remember that since the beginning of food control there has not been, 1 think, any subject which has disturbed public opinion so much as the discussion over eggs. Housewives, and they are a forcible group when they get going, took the view that some important appanage of their homes was to be interfered with, and they made their voices heard in no uncertain manner in demanding that the maintenance of egg production must be continued. I would with great respect express the hope that the Minister of Food will take no further steps" to further ration eggs."

THE RIGHT SORT OF HOUSE "The right sort of house has to be well designed. That is where the architect conies in." said Mr. li. Llewellyn Davies, British engineer and architect, in a recent broadcast talk. "It's not just the appearance of the house that depends on the architect and his plan, it is the whole character. Most of us have known houses that had the right character; and others that were always somehow unpleasant whatever one tried to do with them. This difference is the difference between good and bad design; and the architect's job is to design well. Even if a house has all the cupboards and fittings and requirements that the housewife wants, and is made in the most up-to-date scientific manner, it will be no place to live in or look at unless it is well designed. Good design needs a lot of thought and study. The things I'm talking about are the 'size of the windows, the shape of the room, the colours on the walls; those are the things that make the difference between a brick box and a home."