NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 185, 1 May 1924, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

Parents of small children attending school will second a protest made by the School Committees’ Association against the operation of an Education Department regulation providing that a pupil shall not bo marked present unless he or she attends school for two hours in the afternoon. An excellent custom has hitherto prevailed of allowing children in the lower classes to go home for the day at 1 o’clock on exceptionally wet days. On such occasions tho school working day is shortened for these children by an hour or so, but they are saved a double journey in tho rain. In framing the regulation complained of, the Education Department presumably must have overlooked its effect on this thoroughly commendable practice. The regulation certainly ought to be so amended as to permit a continuance of the reasonable consideration at present extended to small children.

Allusions made from time to time to the German election campaign are not particularly encouraging as they bear on the prospects of European settlement. Though there are twenty-three parties in the field, tho contestants are grouped broadly <in three main factions. For practical purposes the German Social Democrats may be grouped with tho moderate middle-ground parties which are willing to seek a peaceful accommodation with the Allies. The other two main divisions are the Nationalist reactionaries and the Communists. Much as they are opposed in other ways, the Nationalists and the Communists are of one mind in furiously attacking the moderate parties. The Communists are particularly bitter in their attacks on the Social Democrats—tho party from which their own is in great part an offshoot. To appearance the moderate parties are putting up rather a poor fight against Nationalist and Communist extremists. It is possible, however, that a big silent vote may bo cast for- the parties which are prepared to approach a peaceful settlement with the Allies by tho only route that is open—that of accepting such a plan of reparations payment as has been outlined by the committees of experts.

The arresting feature of the British Budget—a feature which overshadows even the anticipated refusal to endorse the Imperial preference proposals of tho preceding Government —is the announcement it contains that the McKenna duties will bo abolished on August 1. This latest policy move of the British Labour Government is fairly described by the London Daily Telegraph as “a monstrous act of destructive bigotry.” Applied in the first instance to tho protection of certain key industries, tho McKenna duties of 33j per cent., are applicable to other industries only after investigation by the Board of Trade has established tho validity of complaints Of dumping. Tho duties have already been of service in protectingsome home industries in the otherwise unprotected British market. In such economic conditions as are now opening in Europe, however, the measure of protection the duties afford is likely to be even more seriously needed in the immediate future than it has been in tho past. There is a plain prospect of conditions in which tho British market will be flooded with cheap imports from foreign countries. The McKenna duties were tho last remaining obstacle to this process of dumping. Their removal is more than likely to involve a serious and widespread dislocation of British industry, now trembling on the rise out of acute depression and a corresponding increase of unemployment. The first Labour Chancellor in Great Britain assuredly has found a strange way of advancing the interests of tho British working man. Mr. Snowden claims that his decision to abolish the duties gives effect to the verdict of tho country at the late election. He was felicitated, subsequently, by Mr. Asquith and by Mr. Lloyd George, whose Government fathered the Safeguarding of Industries Act, under which the duties are imposed. Apparently this reckless exposure of the British market to the unrestricted competition of foreign cheap labour and depreciated exchanges has established a bond of union between the Liberal and Labour Parties, which lately were on cat-and-dog terms. Whether the decision of the Labour Government in this matter should be regarded as purely an act of doctrinaire fanaticism, or as a bid for Liberal support, is uncertain. Tho outlook opened in oon&equenco la certainly unpromising.