TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 21852, 1 November 1932, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

“Round the Corner.” Sir Robert Horne, M.P., in a speech at Dunblane, Perthshire, expressed his belief that “our noses are round the corner” and that we had broken away from the worst stages of the world depression. He said that he was in favour of a standard of exchange embracing both gold and silver. More than half of the world’s trade was being conducted on British sterling as a measure of value, but in China the standard was silver. It would be of great advantage if all the great trading nations of the world had a measure of value which applied everywhere. America had placed the silver problem upon the agenda of the prospective Monetary Conference, so that it would have due consideration. It was to be hoped that the nations would come to clear and definite conclusions. Referring to the conversion achievement, Sir Robert said that the anticipation of a period of cheap money had already brought a new spirit of confidence into the realm of commerce and industry; and it only required the clearing up of certain political problems to set the world going again upon a new course of prosperity. In regard to war debts, he said it remained for the nations in Europe which owed war debts to the United States of America to make a settlement with their creditor. Upon this settlement the future hinged. The conference at Ottawa had brought a new hope and a new prospect to all the countries of the British Commonwealth. Belief in Manic

“It must be admitted that even the almost sacrosanct British Pharmacopoeia contains a good many survivals of ill-founded primitive beliefs in its materia medica, which have no foundation on scientific data, but represent popular superstitions,” declared Dr S. Henning Belfrage in a lecture on “Common Ailments.” “Despite his boasted culture, civilized man is still the willing dupe of the quack and the charlatan. He clings to his belief in the magical cure of disease promised him by any rogue who can sufficiently well advertise his nostrum. There never was a time when quacks so flourished. The numbo-jumbo magic of the primitive medicine men still survives in civilization and represents the incapacity of the bulk of humanity to develop the habit of founding belief on evidence and reason rather than on the wishes and emotions.” The individual citizen must be educated to know and to desire the means to attain health and it was the duty of the State to see that these means were available.

League Loans. The League Loans Committee (London), of which the chairman is Sir Austen Chamberlain, has addressed a memorial to the British Government, drawing attention to the present serious position of the loans issued under the auspices of the League of Nations, and asking that the Government move the League to do everything in its power to safeguard the special status of these loans. About seven loans have been issued under the League of Nations, all of them having been raised with the object of furthering the policy of European reconstruction. They were approved in detail by the Council of the League of Nations with the concurrence and support of the British Government, which was at all times represented on the Council, and the very fact that recourse was had to the League shows the difficulty, and, indeed, as the memorial to the Government suggests, practically the impossibility, of making such issues at the time under any other auspices. The committee points out that the British investing public, which subscribed half the total of the League loans (£40,000,000 out of £83,000,000), did so in the faith that a special security attached to them, and that, having regard to the circumstances of the issue, both the Council of the League of Nations and his Majesty’s Government would exercise a special watchfulness in regard to them. “We venture to submit,” states the committee, “that his Majesty’s Government cannot be indifferent to the deplorable effect on the influence of the League of Nations, both in financial, and in other fields, which must be produced by defaults on these loans, and to the difficulty and even impossibility which such defaults must place in the way of raising any further loans for reconstruction purposes without the guarantee of Governments other than the borrowers.”