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The Crown had not a leg to stand upon, and the AttorneyGeneral was reduced to pleading that if judgment went against the Revenue the whole machinery of the Income Tax Act, which had been in operation for a hundred and twenty years, would be broken down. This gives us the measure of the service rendered by Captain Henning, as subsequently explained in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's somewhat subdued reply in the House of Commons (February 3rd) to a question of Sir William Davison:

The decision disapproves the interpretation of the law which had prevailed since the beginnings of our income-tax code, and the consequent position is receiving my attention. On the question of costs in this case the position is as follows: In the High Court the respondent appeared in person and was awarded costs by the Court. These have been paid as fixed by the Taxing Master. In the Court of Appeal counsel was engaged by the respondent, who was again awarded his costs by the Court. These will be paid when the bill of costs is delivered and taxed. Before the case came on in the House of Lords the respondent was informed that the Crown would in any event pay all his costs in the House, subject to a reasonable limitation as regards counsel's fees, and in answer to an observation by one of the learned lords this arrangement was stated to the House by the Attorney-General. I have arranged to hear representations on the general question of costs incurred in these taxation cases, and my hon. friend may rest assured that this difficult matter will receive my careful consideration in all its aspects.

Sir W. Davison: While thanking my right hon. friend for what he has said, I hope he will bear in mind that a large number of taxpayers are prevented from taking the benefit of the decision which they have obtained from the Commissioners by reason of the threat to carry the matter to higher courts, and the immense legal costs thereby incurred.

Another question of inordinate interest to taxpayers is whether tax collectors get commissions on the sums they collect. If so, much would be explained in their iniquitous proceedings.

We find this pathetic story in "The Way of the World” in the Morning Post (a feature now transformed into "Notes of the Day" by our enterprising contemporary):

Colds

I met a friend to-day with an extremely bad cold. I asked him where he got it, and he said that it had cost him three guineas. A month ago, he explained, he had been inoculated against colds and had had a permanent cold ever since. On referring the matter to the doctor who had inoculated him, he was coolly informed that he was not surprised, as he did not think it would do much good." This was the first time the doctor had mentioned that he had any doubts about it. He then offered to try again on my luckless friend for a further five guineas. But he was wise enough to refuse.

We are not in the least surprised; inoculation against colds is both successful and unsuccessful-for some persons it is a worse remedy than the disease it is designed to cure. In a recent issue of the Daily Mail a physician discusses the perennial problem of catching cold, which is always with many people.

The truth is that microbes cause colds; chills do not. The patient who says he contracted a chill was already infected by the " cold" microbe when he first complained of feeling chilly.

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During the winter months doors and windows are kept closed too constantly. Fresh air, the strongest enemy of the common cold, is excluded. Dust soon accumulates in badly ventilated houses, offices, public buildings, and conveyances. The latest medical researches prove that dust, particularly household dust, is largely responsible for the onset of catarrhs and colds.

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In health the natural resistance of the body repels a germ invasion. When this resistance is weak and you are feeling out of sorts the germs gain a sure footing. This condition is produced by: (1) Fatigue from over-exertion, physical or mental; (2) lack of fresh air during work or recreation indoors; (3) wearing insufficient clothing in wintry weather and getting wet feet owing to boots not being damp-proof; (4) a "run-down" state of general health due to illness, worry, or other mental crisis; and (5) not keeping physically fit in winter by open-air exercise.

Can this infernal plague be avoided? We believe it could, at any rate, be immensely mitigated by those who were at pains to take the advice repeated more than once in these pages-namely, to gargle and "snuffle" night and morning all the year round, Glycerin of Thymol mixed with warm water. The other day a distinguished soldier said to the present writer, "I was just going to write to thank you for the advice in the National Review concerning Glycerin of Thymol, which I have used regularly, with the result that I have not had a cold for many months."

DESPITE the efforts of our leading journals to exalt Golf over all other games, to advertise golfers over all other athletes (assuming a golfer may be termed Despite of an athlete), to encourage Putting by fabulous prizes and Putters by preposterous fees, the greater public remains unmoved, and declines to succumb to this modern craze. It is happily, so far, confined to the "comfortable

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classes," in which, however, it has wrought some havoc by diverting active, able-bodied men in the flower of their youth and strength from manlier and more sporting games. With the masses Football in winter and Cricket in summer remain the prime favourites, and for one newspaper reader who ploughs through special articles on somebody's stance," or somebody else's "niblick," a hundred or a thousand turn eagerly to the reports of the Cup Ties, or the latest Test Match gossip. Long may it be so. It were, however, idle to ignore the injury inflicted on English Cricket by the lure of the links, which has of late years appreciably increased our difficulty in keeping our end up against so virile a nation as Australia, where we understand Golf to be very much of "a side line," at any rate so far as the equivalent institutions to our Public Schools and Universities are concerned. After Cricket and Football, Lawn Tennis is probably the most popular game in England to-day, and thanks to the spread of Hard Courts it is rapidly growing among all sections of the community. It has this one advantage over cricket and football, namely, that whereas cricket and football enthusiasts must necessarily be chiefly spectators because there is no room for them to play, the lawn tennis world consists mainly of players. This year will be a landmark in the history of the game, as Wimbledon celebrates its Jubilee, which promises to attract a galaxy of talent from every country under the sun. Its most melancholy feature will be the obvious ability of Americans, Australians, and Frenchmen "to teach their grandmother how to suck eggs." We earnestly hope for the good of the game and for our own national self-respect that the hysteria to which the Riviera has lately been prone will not infect the Wimbledon Championships.

ALMOST as soon as this number of the National Review is published another and very formidable Australian team will have embarked with a view to conTest Cricket

firming afresh on English grounds that cricketing supremacy which has not been seriously threatened since the Great War. The Australians have

left little to chance, and every arrangement they make, as well as every restriction they impose on the comfort or happiness of their players, is evidence of their keenness in this contest which to many Australians is an "acid test" of their capacity as a community. Considering the almost monotonous success of Australian cricket of late years we may regard their present zeal as a tribute to the prowess of the Mother Country, an acknowledgment of the fact that we command immense individual resources provided we are willing to turn our Test Match Eleven into a team by affording it opportunities of playing together instead of pursuing our traditional haphazard methods, which have constantly resulted in our champions finding themselves for the first time on the same side when playing against the Australians. It is not our business to criticize either the composition of, or the conditions imposed on, the Australian players. The Australian public are fully equal to that task, and some of their criticisms make us realize how hard a row the Selectors have had to hoe. Our business is to get together the best possible England XI at the earliest possible moment, and to give it a chance of doing itself justice in the five Test Matches. We have magnificent batting, bowling and fielding. The problem is to combine the players of most skill and possessing the match-winning temperament-without which all their skill is futile. We should probably do best if we entrusted one man with the job of selection, but with the present rage for Committees this is probably a counsel of perfection. The British public who provide the gate that makes Test Matches possible are entitled to demand that the arrangements shall aim at decisions rather than at "draws."

"God's Own Soil"

As Americans do nothing by halves, it is not surprising to learn that the ravages of what may be called "the influenza of Golf" have attained colossal dimensions across the Atlantic. According to the Observer, which discreetly relegates the information to a back page (February 14th), Putting is eclipsing Prohibition as a topic of conversation in the States. Golf,

we are told, "has swept and is still sweeping the country like a plague," and the statistics in this land of statistics

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almost take one's breath away.'

No less than £260,000,000 is already invested in Golfing Hotels and Golf Links. £94,000,000 is annually spent in playing a game which actually embraces 2,000,000 players, though so far, we are told, “America has only touched the fringe of Golf," which by the end of the year will number 3,000,000 votaries, requiring 6,000 Clubs to accommodate them. Prophets predict that "within the next generation 15,000,000 Americans will be playing Golf . . . the surface of Country Club buildings has so far only been scratched." On this basis the Observer opines that 25,000 Club Houses and 30,000,000 acres of land will be ultimately consecrated to Golf. Our contemporary adds:

Non-golfers will probably throw up their hands in horror at such fearful waste of God's own soil, but it must be remembered that much of the land on which Golf is played is of little use for cultivation.

We are far from "throwing up our hands in horror" at this transatlantic development. On the contrary, we rejoice, as it will tend to equalize previously unequal conditions between Golf-dazed England and Golf-free America, who was able to establish her superiority at all the faster sports and games, from boxing to lawn tennis, while our younger generation cultivated the Links. We shall have a chance of recovering some of our lost laurels if young America succumbs to Putting while young England resumes running.

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LAWN TENNIS would become so repulsive if we had any more Wills-Lenglen matches of the Cannes variety that most players would prefer to retire to bowls, croquet, or skittles-failing golf. Neither of the young ladies concerned bear any responsibility for their match being converted into the worst kind of American "stunt," and we can only sympathize with them as the victims of vulgarity and sensationalism. Presumably there was " money in it" for somebody which made it a vested interest to magnify this game into a firstclass international event in which patriotic passions were

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