NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 46, 18 November 1929, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

Another, warning signal to the Government to pause and reconsider its extravagant railways construction programme is contained in the returns for the half-year. Compared with the first six months of last year, the surplus of revenue over expenditure is less by £138,021. In spite of the increased mileage of open lines revenue is greater by only £94,557, and its small growth is more than offset by the expansion of expenditure by £232,578. The net result is that, as already stated, the accounts are £138,000 to the bad on the half-year. Allowance should be made for the fact that the best part of the Easter revenue was lost to this year’s accounts. But it must also be remembered that, with two ,Easters to .help them last year, the railways made a loss of £930,000. It seems clear, on the returns to date, that the loss in the current year will pass the million-mark. Such'a serious prospect would prove an effective warning to responsible statesmen. The present Government, however, seems set on its dangerous course, which involves the spending of another £15,000,000 on the railways' from whose capital account the sum of £8,100,000 has just been written off.

When the British Labour Government decided to resume full diplomatic relations with the Soviet, grave misgivings were expressed that Moscow would not carry out the terms of the' Protocol. More particularly was it forecast that it would be difficult to bind the Soviet in the matter of propaganda. So it has proved. It is only a few weeks since the. Protocol was signed and only a few days since a British Ambassador was appointed to Moscow: Yet the cablegrams record the issue of an inflammatory manifesto to peasants and workers in India. The manifesto is the work of the Communist International and perhaps the Soviet may disclaim it. But no one will be deceived because the first is known to be the tool of the second. “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” The British Government must already be aware of the treachery of the false friend to which it has given recognition. The question is whether Mr. Ramsay MacDonald will have the courage to denounce Moscow and return to the policy of Sir Austen Chamberlain.

One of the greatest social changes of recent times in England will be effected by the proposed legislation for raising the schoolleaving age to fifteen. This has been an ideal of British statesmanship, irrespective of party, for many years past. The. difficulty always has been to find the money necessary for the institution of this great reform. The proposal of the Labour Government is to introduce the necessary legislation before Christmas. The actual changes which will occur as the result of its operation cannot develop for some considerable time. It is estimated, for example, that the scheme will involve the appointment of ten thousand additional teachers, an increase in the number of training colleges to deal with this large influx, and correspondingly a huge increase in the expenditure for staffing alone, to say nothing of the additional school buildings and extra class-room accommodation required. Furthermore, the maintenance grants to be paid to necessitous parents to compensate for the loss of their children’s earnings as the result of the compulsory extension of the school age by one year will amount to a very large sum. It may be hoped that the benefits frorp the extra school year will, in some sort, balance the added burdens on the British taxpayer.

The arrival of Lord Craigavon at Auckland to-day draws attention to the “tight little country” of which he is the Prime Minister. The adjective “little” applies only to the area of Northern Ireland, for it carries a population about 200,000 less than our own. Judged on area, New Zealand is twenty times larger—lo3,B6o square miles compared with 5240. Despite the great disparity, Northern Ireland devotes almost as great an area to the growing of grain and pulse crops as does New Zealand, and last year had 156,000 acres in potatoes, compared with 22,000 acres in the Dominion. . But Northern Ireland falls far short of us in pastoral production—wool, meat, and dairy produce—and it is the great industrial development centred on Belfast that supports a large proportion of her population. The 1,000,000 spindles and 40,000 looms of the linen industry gives employment to 110,000 pairs of hands, while the Belfast shipyards employ another 20,000. No doubt Lord Craigavon will be able to tell us something of the problems created by this concentration in the Northern Irish capital. And on another point New Zealand statesmen could well seek information—the progressive decline over the past four years of taxation and expenditure in Northern Ireland.