The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND London Representatives R. B. BRETT & SON NEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREE LONDON. ECA WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1934. LIVING DANGEROUSLY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20266, 28 March 1934, Page 8

The Christchurch Star. PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND London Representatives R. B. BRETT & SON NEW BRIDGE HOUSE, 30/34 NEW BRIDGE STREE LONDON. ECA WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1934. LIVING DANGEROUSLY.

' | ''HE MAYOR of Wellington should not have been surprised at the American offer he has received of armour plate to be incorporated in car bodies or in vests and coats to resist bomb, knife or bullet, nor at a quotation for antigas equipment. An illustrated paper from Japan the other day showed high school girls undergoing gas-mask drill, and there can be no doubt that the civil population of almost every country will in time be forced to consider such defensive equipment. The gas attacks of the future will come from the air. Mr George Rernard Shaw lias said that London would never be wiped out by gas because it would surrender first, but that is an absurdity because gas attacks, to be successful, must have the element of surprise. It amounts to this, therefore, that even isolated countries like New Zealand must have means of meeting such an attack, for they must be prepared for what the least civilised combatants are prepared to stoop to. However, the danger of war is not so real as it seems, for once the civil population are aroused to the real menace of these modern horrors they will, as an English writer has put it, “ see their leaders on a lamp post before they march out to the holocaust of youth.” Mutterings among the Nazis against Hitler are in themselves an evidence of this probability. “ There is one advantage at least about a dictatorship,” said a writer in London “ Truth ” the other day. “It cannot survive an unsuccessful war. The danger of revolution is too vivid to the rulers of modern Europe. The reality of air attack is too real to their peoples for any of the old war cries to rouse the ancient fever. A sentiment pervades the world of 1934 that will allow of no heroic experiment. When that sentiment finds vent in action we shall have disarmament indeed.” AN UNTIMELY CHORUS. gUCII A PERSISTENT CHORUS of protest by headmasters is maintained against economies in education that it might almost be imagined there "was a conspiracy afoot to influence public opinion in a sense wholly contrary to the facts of the situation. A new note, on an old theme, is struck by a Hamilton headmaster, who claims that education is the last department on which we should economise, and who speaks of the opening of new picture theatres (though pictures surely are an educational factor) as if they were erected with money that had been diverted from education. It cannot be said too often that the cost of education in New Zealand has gone completely out of hand, and very substantial economies have still to be made by any Government that claims a sense of financial responsibility. There is, however, one direction in which it is possible to agree with this particular headmaster, and that is in regard to the disheartening effect of rationing, which has reduced four of his staff after the payment of various dues to less than £6O per annum. This scheme is certain to drive the brightest young members of the profession into other occupations, and to leave those remaining under the impression that some day the State will owe them all a salary very much in excess of what the system can stand. It is an unfounded expectation that the more intelligent of the younger teachers would do well to weigh very seriously.