THE VOICE OF THE PRESS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 57, 14 March 1929, Page 7

THE VOICE OF THE PRESS

WHAT THE PAPEHS SAY CURRENT EVENTS REVIEWED. EXPERIMENTS. Experiments arc all very well in a scientific laboratory, -which is built and equipped for experiments, but they are not so tolerable in a municipality- When the Mayor was asked the other night about the municipal review ho replied that it was an experiment. The municipal market was similarly described. And now the Labour group is planning another experiment in the shape of a municipal milk snply. It would be interesting to know what these experiments have cost the ratepayers. Neither the'market nor the monthly publication has been of the slightest service to the public, and the amateurs who initiated these experiments have had to admit their failure. They were hound to fail, because in neither instance was there need for municipal interference, or, indeed, any reason for it.—‘‘Lyttelton Times.” TO PRESERVE DIALECTS.

j A now use promises to be found [ for the gramaphone in England. It I is to preserve the dialects which are fast disappearing. The. now interest which lias been shown in recent years in local forms of speech is a reflection, ill large measure, of a more scientific modern view of language. It is also an illustration of the saying that we never begin truly to value a thing until We are in danger of losing it. Dialects used to be despised by those who thought themselves scholars. Their contempt caused those who were born to their use to feel ashamed of them, and the scores of rich dialects of England and Scotland have been hastening into desuetude. Now scholars have changed their view. They have come to perceive that dialects are, not a corruption of received language, but that the received language might be more correctly described as an artificial corruption of some particular form of dialect.—-Dunedin “Star.”' NEW CENTRE OF GRAVITY. For many centuries the world lias known a varying, centre of gravity From the. Shipping point of view. The Mediterranean possessed it when the Britons navigated coracles. Later Spain centralised the first trans-At-lantic services, to he followed shortly, both iu West and East, by Dutch and French, and finally by British. The great change from sail to steam did not shake Britain’s position a,s the centre of shipping and ship-building. But with the advent of air-navigation, what new centre of gravity portends?. It was within the competence of Britain’s seamen and shipbuilders to conquer all the disabilities of British and North Allan- . tic weather, but will her aircraftbuilders and their crews rise similarly triumphant above the weather factor of the upper and lower strata? Thi s very vital question is raised by the visit to North Africa of the Hon. F. E. Guest, and by his observation that while “Croydon is on the rim of the Empire, Cairo is situated in perfect Hying country and is the heart jof projected Eimpiro routes.” When a British Air Minister speaks in these terms, and advocates that British Commercial aviation should centre itself in Cairo 'to avoid the menace of European weather, he says something that surely will attract attention. i