NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 135, 3 March 1922, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

Housing matters were again before the City Council last evening when approval was given for the erection by the Government of three pairs of semidetached dwellings at Miramar with an eight-foot stud instead of the prescribed nine-foot one. The buildings are an experiment by the Department in a new system of house construction, and there was some complaint by Labour councillors of a tendency to reduce the standard of the dwellings erected under the housing scheme. However that may be, the fact remains that the houses already built at Miramar have been offered on a practically cost-price basis, and yet their occupants aroj aggrieved at the payments demanded of them. It would be suite impossible for any Government to house the entire community by putting up dwellings and soiling them for less than they cost, and it is difficult to see any ground for contending that a small favoured section of people should be treated in this way at the expense of the rest. If smaller payments aro demanded it can only be either by building a cheaper style of house or by waiting for a reduction in building costs, a principal item in which is labour. Critics find it easy and popular t-o belabour the Government for pot solving the housing problem, but at the same time they are generally barren of fruitful suggestion themselves. « ♦ • •

-’More than three years after the Armistice the Allies are still discussing the question of punishing the war criminals. Of the lengthy lists of persons whose trial was demanded few indeed have been arraigned, and what little punishment was ordered does not appear to have been effectively carried out. The French secured only one conviction out of five cases brought, the Belgians failed to win a verdict in their solitary case, whereas the British obtained convictions in five out of six cases, albeit the sentences imposed wore generally considered inadequate. The French tried to punish the higher authorities, and in consequence found difficulty in proving their guilt on tho legal principles of what is evidence and what is not. The British choso cases in which the individual culprit’s responsibility could be proved up to the hilt. The higher officers whom tho French arraigned were undoubtedly the more deserving of punishment, but their responsibility was the more difficult to sheet home, and they thus escaped. With those whom the British tackled, the fact that they were merely subordinates was made the ground, on the other hand, for the infliction of light punishments. In the circumstances the fact that tho trials were scrupulously fair, as several British legal participants have testified, does not yield much satisfaction. It has been an inglorious process, unless we take the view of Sir Ernest Pollock: “Though the terms of imprisonment, measured by whatever standard, must pass away by lapse of time, the effect of the convictions will stand for ever.”

It is not cheerful news for British shipowners that President Harding is inviting Congress to approve a policy under which the American mercantile marine will be heavily subsidised and will be assisted in other ways to make head against foreign competition. Whether this policy will ultimately serve its intended purpose, however, is extremely doubtful. At present American shipping enterprise is feeling tho full effects of the world depression of shipping trade. At a recent date, apart from vessels privately owned, a thousand of the Government Shipping Board’s steamers were laid up. Tremendous losses have been incurred also by the slump in tonnage values. Recently there were few buyers at 35 dollars a ton for ships some of which were built at a cost ten times as great. Undeterred by this experience, the American Government is now proposing to foster the national merchant marine in conditions which may make it an even more costly luxury than it has proved'up to tho present. Against the proposed annual subsidy of thirty million dollars, there is to be set the creation of a naval reserve, but in addition far-reaching remissions of taxation not only to shipowners, but to importers, are contemplated. President Harding also recommends discriminatory regulations providing that 50 per cent, of all immigrants must be carried in American ships, an extension of coastvj.se trade laws, and preferential railway rates on shipments by American ships. Apparently full effect is now to be given to the discriminatory provisions of the Jones Shipping Law, which was passed some time ago, but hits remained hitherto more or less a dead letter. While, it is maintained, the. new American policy will of necessity impose heavy handicaps on foreign shipping and particularly on the British mercantile marine. It has to be considered also, however, that an important effect of these special measures for the benefit of American shipping iudustty will be to deprive the American people of Che advantages of cheap and efficient shipping transport. The direct cost to tl;o nation of these protective. measures will be very much greater than the annual sum of thirty million dollars proposed as a direct subsidy- Tho indirect loss which must result from treating the American mercantile marine “as a hothouse plant instead of a healthy growth” may be oven greater. Even the United States with its abounding wealth will probably find that a mercantile marine subsidised and otherwise favoured at

the expense of tho general population is a luxury it cannot afford.

Should America adopt the policy of penalising foreign competition in shipping trade, the question of taking retaliatory measures may command serious attention within the British Empire. Discussing the outlook recently, Mr. Archibald Hurd observed that all restraints on shipping were bad, and particularly bad for those who applied them. British shipowners, he sai’d. did not like such cut-throat business, and did not believe that in most cases it paid. “But,” he added, “. . . if the shipping of this country (Great Britain), which offers hospitality t<j foreign and British ships in its ports without discrimination, is to bo treated unfairly in foreign ports, we may be driven to act against the principles we have hitherto preached and practised.

. . . We are one of a group of nations, which, with dependencies, have a population of 440,000,000 people—four times as many people as are to be found even in the United States- Now, if restrictive measures are to be enforced against British shipping, there is always the possibility—l put it no higher than that—that all these nations, united, as the world saw during the Great War in every act, might decide to cooperate in peace in fighting for the existence of British shipping.”