TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 25362, 14 August 1935, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Parasites to Kill Weeds. That greatest of all agricultural stations, Rothamsted, near Harpenden, England, enjoyed its annual function in June with that ardent and expert husbandman, Lord Bledisloe, as chief visitor, writes Sir W. Beach Thomas in the Spectator. , He has just come back from New Zealand and has doubtless been interested in the latest of the Rothamsted contributions to the balance of nature in those delectable islands. Rothamsted has bred and sent out in their millions classes of insects that make it their business to harry the blackberry and the gorse, both of which (like ’ the sweet-briar in Tasmania) have proved pernicious weeds. It happens that the gorse weevil was so numerous close to Rothamsted last year that on one common thick with gorse, I failed to collect a score of seeds. Almost every pod was a weevil stable. I hear that the insects are working hard in their new environment. Earl Beatty on the Navy.

Speaking in the House of Lords on the Anglo-German naval agreement, Earl Beatty said he was distressed and disturbed at the situation that existed to-day. The Navy was not strong enough to guarantee the safety of British seaborne trade because Britain was bound by treaties. She had been shackled ever since the London Treaty was signed. Serious deficiencies in the Navy had accumulated over a long period of years. The money now being swallowed up in making good these deficiencies was money that should have been applied to the building of more destroyers. Speaking generallv, he welcomed the German naval agreement. Britain owed a debt of gratitude to Germany in this respect. If Germany had suggested 50 per cent. Britain could not have stopped her. He maintained that a gesture of that kind did away definitely and completely with all' possibility of rivalry on the sea between our two countries. This agreement did not limit the number of vessels Britain possessed and it did not prevent her from building any number she liked. But it did ensure that there would be no competitive building programmes between Britain and at least one country in the world, and that was something to be thankful for.

Peace and “Pacifism.” Under the above heading, The Times recently addressed some plain words to the breed of pacifists who objected to the organization of Officers’ Training Corps, Boy Scouts and Church Lads’ Brigades, because they “inculcated the military spirit.” The Times said: The conception of discipline presented by an annual camp or jamboree or a public schools’ field day is as remote as it could well be from that worship of force which “anti-militarists” have imuorted from abroad for their own purposes and seek to fasten upon a perfectly healthy activity with a normal and necessary place in education. The whole campaign of the small, but pertinacious, cohogt which has chosen to inscribe “holier than thou” upon its banner rests upon a fiction of its own inventing. It is the more mischievous because, while it bickers about things which have no importance and no relevance to the organization of peace, it impedes or distracts a steady and united vision of the real goal. It is an offshoot of the belief that self-righteous gesticulation in one country will somehow mesmerize the unheeding Continent or the still less impressionable East. The belief is notably held by persons in whom the emotions have usurped the seat of the intelligence. They compensate their impatience with the difficulties and delays of true peacemaking by contriving and chastizing figments of militarism at home. Thus they provide a comfortable outlet for hearts which, whatever their capacity for sound or foam, are certainly too full for sense.