DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18697, 25 July 1932, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

That colds arc associated with crowded cities , public The Souroe health officials have

of long suspected. . Common Colds. Wilson G. Sinilfie, of Harvard, now supplies the supporting evidence. In four isolated communities colds are caught only from outsiders. Spitsbergen’s case is especially impressive. The miners of that most northerly community live and sleep in damp, hot barracks, work in drafts at temperatures below freezing, but catch no cold. When Dr. Smillie concludes that tho common cold must be attributed to an infection and probably to one that can never be seen under the microscope we naturally ask if there is no scrum that will impart immunity. Ho holds out no hope. Only the secondary infections may perhaps be thus controlled. The primary cold seems to be unconquerable—-the price that we pay for swarming In cities.

The experts have made Geneva what it is by trying lo reThe Exports dime the peace lha*. and everybody wants to n/luddlomont. a formula that nobody understands, writes Evelyn Sharp in the Manchester Guardian. They have long forgotten that Lo the mass of people everywhere disarmament still means the abolition of arms, and peace means the abolition of war; and in losing themselves ami us in a labyrinth of technicalities they resemble the. Elizabethan schoolmaster who, accused of heating his wife, tried to evade the issue by saying, “1 did not heat her as Mrs Brown, Iml as a curst, cross old woman.” Like Mrs Brown, we do not Ibid that oui’ spade, alters because it is no longer called a spade. But Ihe worst of the Geneva experl is that lie would not call a spade even an agricultural implement; he would split hairs over ils dellnilion for months, trying lo determine If It should be classed as uu

offensive or a defensive weapon, before ho got rid of it .by handing it over to some International court for arbitration. There is a nice story of a mediaeval lady at whose invitation a knight refused to dance or to listen to musio or any form of entertainment, saying that this would be derogatory to his profession of arms. Her answer would please all who still maintain in the face of every expert that war is an anachronism. . “Seeing you are not now at the war nor in place to fight,” she told him, “I would think it best for you to be well greased and set up in an armoury till time were that you should be occupied, lest you wax more rustler than you are.” This at least is sound common sense. But for that higher common sense that Christians call Christianity I fear we shall obtain no hearing at Geneva so long as it is expressed in the simple languago of the parables, which he who runs may read. Experts never run.