Lord Cushendun.

Press, Volume XLIV, Issue 19387, 13 August 1928, Page 10

Lord Cushendun.

The announcement In Saturday's cable news that Lord Cushendun will sign MrKellogg's Pact for the renunciation o£ war on behalf of Britain brings into the limelight a man who has only recently, and in very interesting circumstances, wbn 'a. reputation as an international statesman. When he represented Britain at the session of the Preparatory Disarmament Confere I :e at Geneva last November, Lord Cushendun, though a familiar enough figure in British politics, was merely a name to the rest of the world, but by one speech he became the spokesman of Europe. . The occasion was the dramatic proposal made by Litvinoff, head of the Soviet delegation, for complete and immediate disarmament-ra proposal Which no. practical statesman would have put forward except for an ulterior purpose. The Conference was nonplussed l and angry; it knew, that the Russians were" making a bold attempt to discredit the work of Geneva in the eyes of the world, but it did not know how to reply without compromising itself. It was left to Lord Cushendun to say with crushing courtesy what his colleagues could not find words to say, to expose insincerity masquerading as idealism, and when he sat down the Conference forgot its official restraint in a burst of cheering, To an Englishman the fact that Lord Cushendun was formerly Mr .Ronald MoNeill and is an Ulaterman will help to explain his gift for polite and biting irony. After tryiqg his hand at the law, journalism, and editing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he turned inopportunely to politics as a Conservative while Mr Asquith and the Liberals were at the height of their power, and fought four unsuccessful elections before, a man in his fifties, he sat in the House of Commons. But he had at least arrived in time to use his invective against the Government—" the "rogues of the Treasury bench" he used to call them, for their Irish Home Rule Bill, and once, feeling that invective was not enough, he. threw a House order book at Mr Winston Churchill with great accuracy of aim. There was considerable surprise when, at thei age of sixty, he was made UnderSecretary at the Foreign Office, a position usually given to young and tactful men of s&fe opinions, but his subsequent career seems to show that in the face of g«atresponsibilities he catt put Ulster behind him and become the tuaviter in mOdo, fortiter iii re type of statesman dear to English tradition. His occasional lapses into blontness will perhaps restore something of the

Palmers toman atmosphere which has been' missing for so long from the Foreign Office.

The Winter Show. The purpose of the Winter Show is or ought to be, first, to stimulate producers of all kinds, and in the second place to bring the two main groups of producers closer together. No one was very sure when the experiment was made of a joint show last year that the result-would justify a further ex* periment. But the Exhibition which was opened on Saturday has 50 per cent, more entries and is in every other respect on a more impressive scale. That is to say, the experiment has succeeded, and we may now regard Winter Shows as annual fixtures if they are reasonably well conducted on the business side. No other province lends itself so well aa Canterbury to a joint display of primary and secondary products,, because no. other province produces a greater variety of goods or has a more centrally Bituated capital or better general I facilities for transport. The difficulty of course is that it is not easy to get a representative selection of primary products' under one roof, even so big a roof as that covering the barracks, and not easy therefore to arrange that a Winter Show shall give a true' im* pression of Canterbury's real health and resources. That, however, we need not bother about as long as we do not forget what the real facts ape. The outlook for secondary industries is as good, and always has been as good, aB those engaged in them choose to make it. If they produce the goods

the country wants, at a price the country can pay, and make them known and stand behind them, the country will buy them. The farmer, on the other hand, has only a restricted local market and will always have to depend on the demand for his goods in other parts of the world. Fortunately that demand ,at present is extremely encouraging. Our wool last season brought over £13,000,000 as against £9i millions the year before—an enormous increase which was not wholly accounted , for by a rise in price. Our dairy produce also seems as if it will bring 20 per cent, more this year than it did last; the season at any rate has opened 011 a 20' per cent, better basis, and if present' prices are maintained that will mean about £3,000,000 more 1 before the season ends. It looks also as if we may get from two to three millions more for our frozen meat, so that on present indications farmers j should see 'about' £7,000,000 added to their export trade. That is a very encouraging thought for producers of. both groups to carry round the Show ] with them,'and there is not muoh risk < at present that they will allow it to < rush them again* into dangerous ways.