Search results

IT HAS BEEN standard practice for the past three decades to incorporate some method of fog and frost protection into the design of aviation instrument windows.

An important step towards ousting the Germans from a lucrative branch of West African trade in which Germany has hitherto held almost a monopoly has been proposed by a Colonial Office Committee and adopted by the Government. This Committee was appointed a year ago by Mr. BONAR LAW, with Mr. STEEL‐MAIT‐LAND, M.P., as chairman, “to consider and report upon the present condition and the prospects of the West African trade in palm kernels and other edible and oil‐producing nuts and seeds, and to make recommendations for the promotion in the United Kingdom of the industries dependent thereon.”

In a recent speech LORD ROSEBERY charged the people of this country with possessing, to an inordinate extent, the fatal gift of complacency, and he observed that the nation which is not progressive is retrogressive. “Rest and be thankful,” said LORD ROSEBERY, is a motto which spells decay, and those who have any experience of the methods of the manufacturers of the country will admit that this seemingly severe impeachment is by no means unfounded or uncalled‐for. Industries, of which at one time the English were masters, are now gradually falling into other hands. The workers of other lands are successfully competing with our own, and yet, in spite of this condition of our mercantile affairs, the spirit of complacency is rampant. The sons are content to continue in the footsteps of the fathers, oblivious of the fact that time and seasons do not stand still and that they may be overwhelmed by the advancing flood of competition. The trade conservatism which was in the past opposed to the introduction of the steam‐engine, the power‐loom, and other mechanical appliances, is still responsible for the extreme slowness with which English firms appreciate the necessity for such innovations in the conduct of their business as would place them in a position to hold their own in the markets of the world. In respect to the protection of pure food production Great Britain and the British manufacturers are still a long way behind. Although the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 was one of the first Acts passed in any country to prevent the sale of adulterated food and drink, its machinery is cumbrous, and the subsequent Amendment Acts have not added materially to its efficiency; with the result that the Adulteration Acts do not compare favourably with those of many other countries. The spirit of complacency in regard to food products has affected alike the producer and the distributor, and the result is that in many instances there is no adequate inducement to produce anything but a mediocre article—such an article, in fact, as only escapes condemnation because of the faulty construction of the machinery of the law.

At a meeting of the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington on the 9th May, Councillor R. DUDLEY BAXTER, Chairman of the Law and General Purposes Committee of the Council, brought up a Report as follows:—

Fatigue, occurring in an average healthy individual, under ordinary conditions of life, and while foodstuffs of a very usual character are being ingested, is an indication of an inability on the part of the organism to meet, with sufficient rapidity, the demands of the body created by wear and tear. It is an association of defective oxidation and the undue accumulation of waste products in the tissues and blood, and is in a very large percentage of cases caused solely by a deficiency in the average dietary of to‐day of one or more of those mineral elements which are essential to life. That mineral substances are indispensable to life has been fully demonstrated, for it has been shown that animals fed upon proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, which have been rendered as ash‐free as possible, perish even more rapidly than if they are deprived of food altogether.

The next month or two behind us and this decade will have passed, to merge in the drab background of the post‐war years, part of the pattern of frustration, failure and fear. The ‘swinging sixties’ some called it, but to an older and perhaps slightly jaundiced eye, the only swinging seemed to be from one crisis to another, like the monkey swinging from bough to bough in his home among the trees; the ‘swingers’ among men also have their heads in the clouds! In the seemingly endless struggle against inflation since the end of the War, it would be futile to fail to see that the country is in retreat all the time. One can almost hear that shaft of MacLeodian wit christening the approaching decade as the ‘sinking seventies’, but it may not be as bad as all that, and certainly not if the innate good sense and political soundness of the British gives them insight into their perilous plight.

Town Clerk's Office, Town Hall, Bethnal Green, E. 18th November, 1916. To the Chairman and Members of the Public Health Committee. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, At a recent meeting of the Public Health Committee, the Chief Sanitary Inspector reported upon legal proceedings which had been unsuccessful owing to the case of “Hunt v. Richardson” decided by a King's Bench Divisional Court of five Judges on the 2nd June, 1916, and I then reported upon the legal aspect of the case.

In a recent article dealing with the crimes against humanity committed by Germany, The Daily Telegraph remarks that thousands of innocent men, women, and little children murdered in cold blood by airship and submarine appeal for vengeance. The acts of Germany from the early days of the war onwards have filled decent‐minded people with feelings of loathing, and it is well that the last bonds uniting the two nations should be severed. This is no ordinary war. It has cut a deep chasm between the British and German peoples. By every means in our power we must remove, root and branch, those enemy influences in our midst which, by a process of “peaceful penetration,” were undermining our social, financial, and industrial power.

AFTER more than thirty‐three years THE LIBRARY WORLD appears in a new and, we hope our readers will agree, more attractive form. In making such a change the oldest of the independent British library journals is only following the precedent of practically all its contemporaries. The new age is impatient with long‐standing patterns in typography and in page sizes, and all crafts progress by such experiments as we are making. Our new form lends itself better than the old to illustration; we have selected a paper designed for that purpose, and illustrated articles will therefore be a feature of our issues. We shall continue as in the past to urge progress in every department of the library field by the admission of any matter which seems to have living interest for the body of librarians.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.