TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 25308, 11 June 1935, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Art of Publicity. Post Office Publicity—a freely illustrated pamphlet just issued—is itself an example of the department s new policy of taking the public into its confidence, remarks a review published m Public Opinion. The text is adopted from an informal address recently given by its Public Relations Officer, Sir Stephen Tallents. It examines in terms of Post Office experience the modern developments in business and public administration which are leading government departments, local authorities and other great corporations to pay increasing attention to a subject which many of them have hitherto disregarded. It shows recent advances in the arts of press advertising and exhibition display. It stresses the impersonal quality of the publicity appropriate to great undertakings, and dwells on the importance of high artistic • standards. It analyses the legitimate purposes of publicity—from the selling of commodities and services to the winning of public co-operation and goodwill, ana the instruction and encouragement of large bodies of staff—and describes clearly the methods by which the British Post Office is pursuing these purposes. Size of Ocean Liners. The spectacle of the Aquitania stuck for 24 hours within sight of port on a mudbank from which the strongest tug power of Southampton could not drag her is a forcible reminder of the embarrassments to navigation that increase with the size of ships, remarks the Manchester Guardian. Drake, with his 100-ton Golden Hynd, must have sailed up Southampton Water with a great deal less apprehension than does the captain of a 50,000-ton ocean giey—hound.” The deep-water channel is narrow, and it bends. A strong cross wind blowing even on a ship of moderate length proceeding at slow speed can make the passage a tricky one. Yet the Aquitania, though a big ship in her day, does not nearly reach the dimensions of the Queen Mary or of the Normandie. The leap in size taken with their construction is unprecedented in shipbuilding history. The Normandie and the Queen Mary will both be over 70 000 tons, and the latter has a length over all of more than 1000 ft. Docks have been expanded and channels dredged on both sides of the Atlantic to accommodate them. But the problems of navigation that the berthing of them will raise have yet to be experienced. It may well b that the world approaches the point of finality in the size of ships. There is little point in constructing vessels large enough to withstand any duress in deep water if they tend to become unmanageable when storm pursues them into the narrow waters of port.

Empire Migration Plan. “I believe that until we are in a position to finance a large migration policy we shall do no good at all, or at any rate make very' slow progress, in reducing unemployment,” asserted Mr Marcus Samuel, M.P., in a maiden speech on the Budget in the House of Commons. “Those who have read Professor Stephen Leacock’s ‘Economic Prosperity in the British Empire’ and other books realize the enormous territories which are awaiting population. I hope the Government will take the opportunity afforded by the visit of representatives of various Governments to see if some start can be made with a vast scheme of this sort. This is not the occasion to go into details. I will only say one thing. I think some such scheme might be started this year as a sort of Jubilee memorial in honour of their Majesties. I have never seen any scheme which did anything more than outline what could be done, and in no case have I seen a satisfactory method of financing such a scheme. It could only be successfully accomplished on the basis of help and goodwill of every member of the community. I have dreamed of a scheme embracing 100,000 families a year—families of four people—which in five years would dispose of 2,000,000 people from the labour market; 1,000,000 young people would never come on the labour market. I visualize the realization of this scheme by some sort of national income loan, which would be subscribed to by all on the basis of 2J per cent.- of the national income, which would give us about £100,000,000 a year, sufficient to provide a £lOOO capital for each family who left these shores, Such a movement would assist exports, our shipping, our friends overseas would provide territories; railways would be built and new communities established overseas.”