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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18513, 25 March 1922, Page 8

At a time when publicists, like Mf Harold Cox, are disposed to discover A serious problem in the over-population of Great Britain, it perhaps requires a little courage to strike the contrary note. The real national problem '8 doubtless that of bringing about the increase of trade necessary to the restoration of prosperity and the elimination of unemployment. A prominent member of a gathering of London business men said recently that he believed that they might have twice the number of people in the British Isles if there were enough great organisers and traders to sell the products of their factories in all quarters of the world. It is the little reservation that is the stumbling block. Napoleon usually gets the credit for terming the British a nation of shopkeepers. But if he thus expressed himself he was apparently not being original, but rising a phrase borrowed from Adam Smith. Mr H. Gordon Selfridge has recently been . taking appropriate opportunity of placing a very reasonable and comforting .interpretation upon an expression not altogether flattering to the national amour propre. At least he has made the best of it, and incidentally suggested ideals for the British man of business to keep in view. He wished, he said, to see in London, the great metropolis of the world, the best of everything, and he did not see why, if ambition combined with energy and imagination, “they should not have the best 8f music, of art, and of science, as well as the most efficient business men. Just as the old merchants of the Earseeatio League, five hundred years ago, sent their sons to the inland city of Bruges to learn the last word of efficiency In trade, he should like the young men from the uttermost parte of the world to come to London to take the final postgraduate course in the science of business. ” Not without their bearing upon the problem of population axe such pious aspirations.

It is fortunate that the Minister of Agriculture at Home has been able 7 to issue a more or less reassuring statement respecting the effect of the measures being taken to cope with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The figures relating to the daughter of stock rendered necessary run into many thousands, and it ia expected that the departmental expenditure entailed will reach £1,000,000, inclusive of compensation. The outbreak baa been very much more serious than that of 1920, and infinitely worse indeed than any other which lup occurred since 1883. It ia described as having descended upon the Old Country in its latest manifestation like one of the plagues of Egypt, ha lees than ten days it covered more than half of England and Scotland. In Great Britain the method adopted for dealing with +.h;« dread 'visitant, based on long and painful experience, is to schedule all infected or suspected districts. All movement of cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats beyond the border of the proscribed area is speedily prohibited, every case that is at all suspicious must be reported under pain of heavy penalty, and every animal proved to be infected must be slaughtered. The killing is not confined to infected animals only; but extends to those that have been in contact with such. In csss of a serious outbreak, such as that at present in evidence, the authoritiee would give scant consideration to uncertain experiments, such as inoculation. In the end, the British system, though ruthless, seems to be much less costly, as well as more sure, than that adopted on the Continent. There, where they endeavour to effect a cure, the cost entailed by foot-and-mouth disease is prodigious. In two years three departments of France lost £5,000,000 -through the disease. In Spain during one year the loss was estimated at £7,000,000, while the losses suffered by Belgium and Germany through the same cause have been immense.

The manifestation of national regard for the character of Sir Arthur Pearson and of admiration for those self-imposed labours in humanity’s cause to which he devoted hie ability and energy has been impressive. But the depth of ite sincerity can best be attested in a practical manner, to wit, through the carrying on of the beneficent works which the courageous philanthropist inaugurated. It would be nothing short of a national reproach were such undertakings allowed to languish. It is to obviate any such calamity that the Arthur Pearson Memorial Fund has been inaugurated, under the presidency of Lady Pearson. The object of the Fond is to endow permanently the many philanthropic enterprises in which Sir Arthur Pearson was so deeply interested. These include St. Dunstan’s Hospital, for the care and after-care of Soldiers and sailors blinded in the war; the National Institute for the Blind, the great organisation which financially assists over forty institutions for the blind; other recognised charities for the blind; and the Fresh Air Fond, which provides a summer holiday for thousands of slum children every year. Of the work that has bean carried out at St. Dunstan’s much has been written, and the achievement represented is one that fires the imagination. Concerning the Fresh Air Fund, it would be superfluous to enlarge. Let it suffice to say that its benefits have extended to over four million children during the last thirty years. Its name, like that of St. Dunstan’s, has become a household word throughout the Empire, and it is to the Empire at large that the appeal on behalf of the Arthur Pearson Memorial Fund is addressed. The philanthropist whose name the Bund bears set a noble example, and the one adequate memorial in his honour is manifestly the perpetuation of the magnificent crusade to which he devoted so much of his life.