The Star. TUESDAY, MAY 22, 1928. NOTES OF THE DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18469, 22 May 1928, Page 8

The Star. TUESDAY, MAY 22, 1928. NOTES OF THE DAY.

MAUDE’S statement that much poverty exists in the city is sadly true, and has been true throughout the summer months, owing to an unusual degree of unemployment. The position is rather worse this year than it has been for several years past, and we think that relief measures might well be undertaken earlier than usual, and that the Citizens’ Committee should make an early effort to secure as much assistance as possible from the Government in the way of relief works. The generosity of the citizens has never been called upon in vain, and a ready response may be counted on in this quarter, but it is still a Government responsibility to provide relief works, and that is the direction in which the greatest assistance should be forthcoming. C* UCH MEDICAL research as the Health I lepartnient boasts in a message from Wellington this morning is quite commendable. The Department is continuing its inquiries into the incidence of goitre and rheumatoid arthritis, and is commencing inquiries into the cause of infantile mortality. Such research, as Dr Watt says, is no prerogative of the laboratory or experimental ward, but depends on facts related to the daily practice of medicine. The activities of the Department could very well be extended in an inquiry into the incidence of infectious disease, particularly in Canterbury, where scarlet fever seems to become more serious year by year, and no effective effort is made either to combat it or to tabulate information which might .get at the seat of the disease by tracing outbreaks to their source. The position in Christchurch is extremely unsatisfactory, and the Health Department might well turn its attention to an intensive study of this particular ciuestion, in co-operation with practitioners who are at present dissipating their valuable energy in the cure or alleviation of a disease that should be preventible. T>RITISH~ PRESS opinions are less interesting at this -t-S moment than American Press opinions on the renunciation of war, because British people, although their fierce love of liberty has led them to take up arms again and again, are inherently peace loving, and could give only one answer to the proposals made for the outlawing of war. The people of the. United States, too, are inherently peaceable, but hitherto proposals that have gone in the direction of arbitration treaties between the two great English-speaking nations' have been opposed in Congress, partly because the nation still cherishes the belief that the Monroe doctrine is effective, and partly because America holds that she must not be embroiled in European politics. Mr Kellogg’s proposals, however, are a great advance on anything ever made on either side of the Atlantic, and it is very gratifying indeed to find the British reply received with satisfaction in the United States. The British view is summarised in one paragraph of Sir Austen Chamberlain’s note:— 1 Preservation of peace has been the chief concern of his Majesty's Government and the prime object of all its endeavours. It is the reason why it has given ungrudging support to the League of Nations and why it has undertaken the burden of guarantees embodied in the Locarno Treaty. The sole object of all these engagements is the elimination of war as an instrument of national policy, just as it is the purpose of the peace pact now proposed.” The difficulty is to devise legal means, as the “ New York Times ” says, by which this principle can be applied fruitfully in the practice of nations. To-day, Russia is the disturbing element in world politics, but if the proposed Pact were signed by Britain, the United States, France,. Germany, Italy and Japan, it would puf an end to the Soviet dream of world revolution, and would remove one of the greatest obstacles to world peace. Britain’s practical and not visionary view of the possibilities of a Pact ought to be received with enthusiasm in the United States, for acceptance of Mr Kellogg’s plan would be, indeed, a triumph for American diplomacy.