TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19458, 24 December 1934, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Money and Mental Hygiene. Y ith the Reports of its oxvn Commissioners before it, the Government cannot justify further inaction in the Depressed Areas,” comments the London Observer. “If it cannot achieve a very wide economic redemption, it can, at any rate, do things that will break the obsession of fatalism. It is the worst feature of the existing policy that it should be directed to nothing better than the stabilising of stagnation.

“The paralysed spirit in which relief is given extends paralysis among the recipients. They require, not less than subsistence, some direct contact with the xvorld’s energies. Occupation is needed in tlicse communities as a measure of mental hygiene. The Reports specify a number of public works which would improve the country’s equipment, and they all insist on the possibilities of land settlement.

That is among the readiest of moral remedies, and, now that agriculture is no longer exposed to all the winds that blow from abroad, the prospect of financial deficits is not so formidable. A chartered company with Government backing could effect a wide revival of vitality, and for any losses it might make we should get a restoration of human values.”

Ideals and Realities

“In the Armaments debate, nothing was made so manifest as the waste of idealist energy when it spurns realities,” states the London Sunday Times. “To ask this country to prohibit the private manufacture of arms while no similar change occurs elsewhere, is to ask it to commit suicide. The temptation. to attack it would he multiplied, and the foreign markets it abandoned would he eagerly occupied by other vendors.

“All that a British Government loyal to its responsibilities ean do is to nurse and follow up every hope of limiting armaments and their production by general agreement. No Power could have given stronger proofs of its readiness to turn swords into ploughshares. And no nation remains more intent on seeing its rulers jieep the world’s attention upon that goal.”