NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 80, 29 December 1930, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

Lord Melchett, whose death is recorded to-day, was better known in his House of Commons days as Sir Alfred Mond, for his elevation to the peerage is comparatively recent. The late Lord Melchett was one of a group of British industrialists and financiers whose grasp of national and Imperial economic problems and public spirit were of conspicuous service to the British Government during the period of post-war reconstruction, He was not only a director of big business enterprises, but had a fine conception of the relationship and responsibilities of big business to the general welfare. His name has been prominently associated with the movement for the rationalisation of industry and the idea of the safeguarding ot industries, put into practice by the previous Conservative Goveinment. Much of the legislation promoted by that Government for the rehabilitation of the country’s economic position as a world commercial power can be traced to his inspiration and counsel. It is therefore a matter for sincere regret that his demise has occurred at a time when his ideas are just about to be brought to fruition. His passing is a distinct loss to the country and the Empire.

According to a cablegram to-day the veteran Marshal Toffre lies so seriously ill that recovery is despaired of. Outside of Fiance nothing was known of Joffre by the general public until he stepped into view as Commander-in-Chief of the French armies at the outbreak of the Great War. His publicity was comparatively shortlived, but in that brief period he achieved undying fame by winning the First Battle of the Marne, thus stemming definitely the German onset which in the dark days of August and September, 1 threatened to overwhelm France and dangerously cripple the Allies. The enemy was thrown back upon the Aisne, the opposing armies dug themselves in, and from that time ensued four years of trench warfare during which the enemy’s strength was gradually worn down and exhausted. The Marshal’s last public appearance of note was at a function in Paris in August, when he was asked to spear; on the World War. He summed it up in twenty words: A people once dreamed of establishing a world hegemony. France ruined their project.. And this was done at the Marne.”

According to a dispatch from the Moscow correspondent of the London Daily Express the Bolshevik economic revolution involved in Stalin’s Five-year Plan for the industrialisation of the State has left a melancholy mark upon Russian life. Professor Paul Haensel, in his recently-published book, The Economic Policy of Soviet Russia, throws an interesting light on the domestic repercussions of the Plan. The author was in the Tsarist regime a member of the State Bank of Russia, and president of the Institute of Economic Research under the'Soviet. The Plan, he explains, was based on the compulsory collectivisation of the Russian peasantry. Those who did not join the collectivist movement were unable to buy agn cultural implements, seeds, or, very often, even matches. Exact y for the same reason everybody joined the co-operative movement because only co-operative shops were allowed to sell essential commodities. From the point of view of organised Communism the Plan has enabled the Soviet to. dump large quantities of massproduced goods in foreign countries at. low prices in order to. meet the cost of machinery for large-scale industrial operations,, without * regard for domestic needs, and with the ulterior object of disturbing the economic equilibrium of the “capitalist countries. The cuit of Lenin,” observes Mr. Austin Hopkinson in the Empire Review, “is fostered not only for industrial objects. It has also a far moie sinister aim, and the Hammer and the Sickle may . mean to Europe jki the future wfiat the Crescent meant to Europe in the past.